
X)S 




Compliments of J. L. DAVIE, 964 AVashington Street. 




ome's Assault on Our Public Schools 



(BAjYE aj^d AJVTIDOTE.) 



-^\5) 



TWO DISCOURSES BY REV. E. R, DILLE, D, D., 



DELIVERED IN THE 



fviil J^. E. GhuFEh, Oal^land, Gal. 
AUGUST 25TH AND SEPTEMBER 1ST, M : 

—BEING— 

Replies to an Address by Rev. Father Gleeson {printed her e- 

zuith)^ delivered at the Inauguration of St. Mary^s 

{Roman Catholic) College., Aug. 1 1^ i88g. 



PRICE, lO CENTS. 



' Carruth &. Carruth, Printers. 



I: 



jfatheF Gleeson'l j?^ddFe||, 

AT THE 

DEDICATION OF ST.MARY'S COLLEGE. 



It will be very gratifying, I am sure, to a large nuiiiber of the people of 
this State to hear of the opening of this institution of learning. The establish- 
ment of such an institution has long been regarded by many in the light of a 
necessity. If it was not erected at an earlier date it was not that its necessity 
was not understood or that its advantages were not foreseen. It was rather 
because those who were qualified to act in this matter were not in a position 
to give eflect to so important an undertaking at an earlier period. But, though 
delayed for the reason I assign, its accomplishment was yet ardently wished 
for and earnestly expected. This was nothing but what was natui'al, for the 
establishment of an institution of this character is a pledge of progress — an 
assurance of enlightenment. The celebration, then, in which we have been 
called upon to take part to-day, is not one of an ordinary character. It is, on 
the contrary, of an exceptionally important nature, hnving been looked forward 
to and anxiously expected with more than ordinary interest for a considerable 
time by a large section of the community. Indeed, next to the establishment 
of our State University, I know of no other college or academy of learning 
on this side of the Bay of San Francisco, that has awakened such general inter- 
est or that has drawn together on the occasion of its inauguration so large an 
assemblage as I have witnessed here to-day. It is pleasing to think that the suc- 
cess which has thus far attended this opening, at least in the point of numbers 
has been in every sense equal to the expectations which have been indulged 
in by the friends and well wishers of this work. Nor should this be at all a 
matter of surprise, for considering tlie work that this institution is expected 
to do and which it is likely to accomplish, it would be rather astonishing had 
not so deep and lively an interest been manifested in it by the general com- 
munity. 

The advantages under which this seat of learning starts on its career of 
usefulness are indeed of a very exceptionally favorable character. In fact 
few institutions of a like nature have liad, at the outset, so much in their favor. 
Located here, in the very heart of this flourishing burgh — this Athens of the 
Pacific Coast — with its delightful and salubrious climate — within easy reach 
of San Francisco, in close proximity with tlie chief institution of learning on 
this Coast, in possession of an admittedly competent staff' of able instructors, 
added to the general good feeling now existing in its favor, it would indeed be 
most disappointing and entirely to be unexpected did not the College of St. 
Mary's of Oakland, become one of the chief educational establishments of this 
great Kepublic. But what, it may be enquired, will be the character of the 
instruction that will be imparted in this college? Will it be of a kind and of 
a standard that will meet the approval and satisfy the requirements of the 
people of our time? I answer unhesitatingly in the affirmative, and I say — 
"yes." It is projjosed, as far as I understood the sC'peof the work to be done, to 
turnout from these halls of learning, accomplished, well trained scholars — youths 
capable of taking their places creditabh^ in all the honorable departments of 
life in the community. It is proposed to prepare and qualify young men here 
for engaging in all the useful and profitable pursuits of human industry in 
the community; it is pi'oposed to train them for entering upon the various 
liberal professions. In short, within these walls is to be imparted a thorough 



2 Rome's Assault on Our Public Schools. 

and liigli standard of education, which will embrace a commercial, nnithemat- 
ical, classic and English course. 

But is tliat all that is aimed at by the projectors of this work? By no 
means. ^\'ere that to be the extent of the labors of tiie men who are now- 
entering upon tlie duties of this college, not a brick would have been laid in 
these walls. The object in view is not merely to turn out capable commercial, 
scientific tnd classic graduates. It is not merely to furnish the learned profes- 
sions with young men of trained, disciplined habits and cultured minds. But, 
if I rigidly understand what is intended, and I think I do, it is to do much 
more than this. What is tliat more? It is to give to the community young 
men whose training, acquirements and principles will render them ornaments 
to society and guardians and defenders of the interests of the people. This 
country is at present becoming alarmed at the crimes, the excesses and dis- 
honesty of many of the public serva.its. Men are beginning to see and under- 
stand that some'tliing additional is needed for a competent jjublic official than 
merely technical qiialilicaticn for office. They are beginning to see tliat neither 
bonds nor prison nor public o^jinion nor social ostracism are of themselves 
enough to restrain the average man from tlie commission jf crime when the 
temptations of unfaithfulness are numerous and strong. In a word, the re- 
cord of the number and magnitude of tlie public defalcations which have oc- 
curred and are constantly occurring in this land is beginning to open the eyes 
of the more thoughtful and reflective in the community to the usefulness and 
even necessity of the inculcation of etliical principles in connection with the 
education of youths, and this if I mistake not very much, is why institutions 
of this kind are growing steadily in favor and popularity with the best and 
most conservidive men of our times. The work then, that this college pro- 
poses to do, will be of a dual cliaracter, that is to say, it will be of an intellect- 
ual and moral kind. It will develop tlie ii-rtellectual faculty and cultivate the 
moral instincts. By the former it will ])rovide the community with capable 
officers, and by the latter with faithful servants. Thus it will become an agent 
for general good and a powerful factor in promoting and guarding the common 
interests. I say a powerful factor in promoting the common interests, for from 
this institution will go forth in all Jiuman probability, as time rolls by, severaJ, 
if not very many of those gifted youths who, as they come to take their place 
in society, will becomethe leaders, the guides and representatives of the people 
— men who will occupy some of the highest offices within the gift of the com- 
munity — who will be amongst the administrators of justice, tlie expounders of 
law and the defenders of the interests of the populace — men, in a word, whose 
voice will be heard at the bar, on the bench, and in the Senate. 

And how important is it not, to have men of this class in positions of trust, 
for what greater blessing can a community enjoy than an incorruptible judi- 
ciary — an enlightened and unpurcliasable legislature and faithful, conscientious 
civil authorities. I will not insist for a moment on the inculcation of so ele- 
mentary a truth, for it must be clear to the minds of all. But the work that 
this institution has cut out for itself does not stop even here. It has a still 
higher and nobler mission to accomplish — that is to prepare for eternity those 
of our faith who will be entrusted to its care — to prepare for the attainment of 
of that noble and magnificent destiny for which God called us all into exist- 
ence those Catliolic youths who shall enter under its roof. This is the special, 
the principal object for which this College has been erected. And this now 
leads us very naturally to enquire how far a Christian coi ibined with a secular 
education, is superior to merely a secular one. As you are aware there are 
two contradictory opinions entertained by the people of this country hereon. 
The one advocates and insists on the exclusion of all ethical principles from 
the region of the school room, while the other equally as strongly calls for and 
demands their introduction. The upholders of the former, unfortunately for 
us, as well as for those who share our convictions, being entirely in the major- 
ity and having the power in their hands, enforce without scruple or regard for 
the interests of the minority, their ideas aiid will in this matter. Now, this 
seems to me a very illiberal, not to say illogical position for any party in the 
community to assume. It is illiberal and unfair because it forces a system of 



Rome's Assault on Our Public Schools. 3 

instruction on tlie unwilling aeceptant'e of millions, regnnlless of their rights 
and interests, and it is illogical and inconsistent inasmuch as it is a conflict 
with the history, the traditions and the professions of this country as a Chris- 
tian nation. If the advocates of the present system of })uhlic instruction in this 
country were to abjure the Christian religion — if they were to proclaim them- 
selves to-the woi-ld as unbelievers in Christain teaching, their position would 
be consistent and intelligible; but as long as they bear the Christian name, as 
long as they are pleased to be known as the followers of the Redeemer of 
mankind, I see nothing but inconsistency and contradiction in their efibrts to 
prevent the youth of the nation being educated in a Christian way. The 
present system of non-{^'hristian education now prevailing in this land might 
be, and doubtless would be admirably adapted, as far as principles are con- 
cei'ned, to a non-Christian country. It would be quite in place, as far as Chris- 
tian teaching is concerned, in the dominions of his royal majesty, the Sultan 
of Turkey, or in those of his royal brother, the Shah of Persia. But for this 
country, which is Christian in religion, Christian in traditions, Christian in gov- 
ernment and sentiment, t lie present system is simply an anachrciiiism. It is out of 
time and i)laee. Do those who uphold it really wish that this country should 
remain what it is, a believing nation? If they do, then let them explain the 
parado.x of wishing a country to believe, without teaching it to believe. Of 
course, I know the jjuerile answer that many would return to this. It would 
be the old stereotyped one, that religion is for the church and not for the 
schools, and that a nation can be Christian without being taught to believe in 
connection with secular instruction, rnfortunately for those who advance 
this reason, it has to be acknowledged that one-half of the jieople of this 
country never enter an ecclesiastical edifice of any denomination whatever. 
How, tlien, I ask, are the youth of the country to be made Cluistian? Per- 
haps some may say by means of the Sunday school, but the half of them don't 
go to Sunday school, and if they did, it would amount to but little. For, what 
can a youth learn in an hour on Sunday ? The Sunday school I regard as little 
better than a sham, a delusion and a mockery. I'nder such circumstances it 
is surely not to be wondered at that millions are ceasing to be Christians in 
this land. 

The fact is the country is Ijecomiiig to a large extent non-Christian. Sta- 
tistics iiave been published in San Francisco, showing that 30,000,000 of the 
inhabitants of this Republic have never been baptized. What does that mean? 
It establishes, I think, very clearly the fact that to a large extent we are Chris- 
tian only in name. Perhaps this is the reason why the present system of edu- 
cation is so earnestly upheld by so many. If so, let its abetters avow their 
belief, and their advocacy and position will be consistent and intelligible. But 
if they will not, at least the (Tod-fearing, riglit-minded, conscientious men of 
all denominations in the land ouglit not to allow themselves to be deluded any 
longer, and they should ask themselves the question, how far the present sys- 
tem of education in this country is resjionsible for the lack of belief that pre- 
vails in this land. I know, of course, that there are many well-meaning, hon- 
orable, high-minded Christian men in the community who are zealous up- 
holders of the present system of public instruction. But have these ever 
examined the system attentively; have they considered its tendencies and 
marked its results? I think not. On the contrary, they take it for granted 
that it is a good, an excellent, aye, a most perfect system. They are strongly 
prejudiced in its favor; and so when anyone raises his voice against it, or 
attempts to point out its defects, they become irritable and excited, and like 
the silversmith of Ephesus they raise a mighty commotion against us. The 
fact is the present system of education in tli's land is to the people of this 
country what that ugly, ill-shaped lerolite, which was worshipped in the 
temple of Ephesus as a goddess in the days of St. Paul, was to the people of 
Asia Minor. That is, it is the great Diana of the Ephesians, and woe to the 
man who dares to attack it rudely. But like the Ephesian deity, it is wor- 
shipped because it it not understood, for when stripped of its tinsel and gaudy 
surroundings, it is anything but the lovable object people take it to be; nay, it 



4 Rome's Assault on Our Public Schools. 

is a mighty, monstrous, insatiable Moloch to which the spiritual existence of 
millions of our little ones is being' constantly sacrificed. 

Having now directed your attention to the inconsistency of this non-Chris- 
tian system of education in a Christian land, I will next ask you to consider 
the dangers and alarmingly deplorable consequences that are certain to result 
herefrom if persevered in for any considerable time. And when I speak of 
dangers and deplorable consequences I do not wish to be understood as employ- 
ing these terms in the religious, but rather in the temporal — national sense. 
Later on I will show how religion is atiected by this system, but for the present 
I desire you to view it in connection with national interests and national pros- 
perity. In formulating the statement then that the present mode of instruction 
in use in this country is dangerous and hostile to the dearest and best interests 
of the Republic there are many, I am sure, who can readily imagine that I 
am attempting too much, for there are those, and indeed I suppose they are in 
the majority in this land, who actually believe that the prosperity of this 
counti'y is dependent on the present system of education. They really, I 
believe, look upon it as the very basis of social ordei' — the pillars of the 
Republic and the panoply and palladium of our national greatness. 

Now to disabuse such persons of this most erroneous idea, 1 would ask them 
if they have ever considered on what national greatness and national prosperity 
must necessarily rest in order to be permanent. What is the basis of public 
order — how is a nation's security to be attained? Very likely such persons 
will tell me, by education — by enlightening the masses. True, but not by 
education in the pagan or non-Christian sense, for instruction to be a guarantee 
of permanency to the State must be of a religious character, inasmuch as the 
Christian republic reposes on moral principles, which, if withdrawn or ignored, 
the entire superstructure must necessarily come down with a crash. 

Enlightenment alone is not sufficient to secure permanency to a nation. 
The history of the world is an evidence of this. Babylon and Egypt and 
Greece and Rome were enlightened and highly cultured in the pagan sense, 
but where are they now? They fell, because the basis on which they reposed 
was of a perishable character, it was not immortal, for there is no immortal 
basis upon which nations can repose save that furnished by Christ 
Jesus in the divine, inperishable principles of the Christian religion. We 
have with us in this matter of the necessity of combining religious with secu- 
lar instruction in the training of youth some of the greatest statesmen that 
have ever lived. 

The greatest and wisest statesmen that ever lived have acknowledged this. 
With your permission I will quote some extracts from their writings, showing 
their views on this matter. And to begin with this country and with one 
whose name is revered by every loyal American — I mean George Washington. 

In his farewell address, that illustrious man speaks of the religious and moral 
dispositions of the people as intimately connected with national prosperity, as 
being the very props and pillars on which human greatness necessarily rests. 
These are his words: "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to politi- 
cal prosperity religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain 
would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert 
these great pillars of human hapjainess, these firmest props of the duties of men 
and citizens. The mere politician equally with the pious man, ought to respect 
and cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with pub- 
lic and private felicity. Let it simply be asked where the securit}' for property, 
for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligations desert the oath, 
which are the instruments of investigation in the courts of justice? And let us 
with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without 
religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on 
minds of a laeculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect 
that national morality can prevail in exclusion of relii^ious principles." How im- 
portant then according to the opinion of this illustrious man, is not the inculcation 
of moral principles into the minds of the young. And again, the same great 
authority, as if in anticiisation of the eflbrts that later on were to be made by 
his countrymen in essaying to teach moral obligations without the aid of relig- 



Rome's Assault ox Our Public Schools. 5 

ion, says: "Beware of the man who attempts to inculcate morality without 
religion." Yet, in the face of this I may say dying declaration of this coun- 
try's greatest champion, we have men calling themselves patriots — men calling 
themselves lovers of their country's well being, doing all in their power — 
working with might and main to support a system of education that rigidly 
excludes from the school room the presence of religion. Have such persons 
ever attentively read and carefully weighed the meaning of Washington's words 
"of all the dispositions and habits that lead to political prosperity, religion and 
morality are indispensable supports?" 

Jf we turn now to the great statesmen of Europe we will iind the same ex- 
pression of sentiment uttered by them in regard to the importance and neces- 
sity of the inculcation of ethical principles in case of the young. Thus that imi- 
nent Protestant minister, Portalis, who discharged the office of public instructor 
under Napoleon I, said: 

"There is no instruction without education, and no proper education without 
morality and dogma. We must take religion as the basis of education; and if 
we compare what the instruction of the present day is with what it ought to 
be, we cannot help deploring the lot which awaits and threatens the present 
and future generations." This wasthougiitfnl language; it was written, as one 
whose name I cannot recall, has well remarked, by the lurid glare of the torch 
that has set all France in a blaze; it was written in the presence of hecatombs 
of victims that had fallen before the popular fury that had been sacrificed to 
the wild passions of the mob; it was written, in tine, by a man who was deplor- 
ing the civil disasters that had befallen his country, and who was ready to trace 
them to the genuine source — the want of proper religious instruction. 

Another even more eminent Protestant statesman and minister of public in- 
struction under Louis Philippe — I mean Francois Guizot, asserted the same 
only in ditierent words. " In order to make popnlar education (said this 
eminent man) truly good and socially nseful (mark that) it must be fundamen- 
tally religions. I do not sim]:)ly mean by this that religious instruction should 
hold its place in popular education and that tlie practice of religion should 
enter into it; for a nation is not religiously educated by such petty mechanical 
devices. It is necessary that national education (I wish you would mark this) 
should be given and received in the midst of a religious atmosphere, and that 
religious impressions and religious observances should penetrate into all its 
parts." No Catholic layman or Catholic clergyman could speak stronger 
than that. And what P'rance's ablest statesmen have said in this regard has 
been echoed by England's foremost men. 

" Religion is not (says Lord Derby) a thing apart from education, but is 
interwoven into its whole system. It is a jirinciiile which controls and regu- 
lates the whole mind and liappiness of th" people. Public education should 
be considered as inseparable from religion." " Religion (says Lord Russell) 
should regulate the entire system of discipline. * * * To omit any in- 
culcation of the duties of religion — to omit instructing the children in the 
principles of the love of God and the love of their neighbor, would be a 
grave, a serious and irreparable fault." 

Now listen to what that very eminent statesman. Sir Robert Peel, said on 
this matter: " I am (said he) for a religif)n as opposed to a secular education. 
I ))elieve that such an education is only half an education, but with the most 
important half neglected." So say all we Catholics, and so say also a large num- 
ber of non-Catholics in this country, and though the majority be against us 
now, yet we hopefully look forward to the day when they will be on our side 
and as ardent supporters as we are of religious combined with secular instruc- 
tion. I will not trespass on your patience any further in this matter of quota- 
tion only while I put before yon the sentiments of two more eminent statesmen, 
the one a (xerman and the other an Englishman, but both non-Catholic. In 
1879, Her Von Puttkamer, then Minister of Public Instruction, said: " I am 
convinced that on the day on which we cease to make the saving teachings of 
the gospel the basis of education, the fall of our national civilized life will be in- 
evitable." I would earnestly recommend the serious consideration of that state- 
ment to the men of this country who are wholly in favor of secular as opposed 



6 Rome's AssauIvT on Our Pubi^ic Schooi^s. 

to seculai' combined with religions instruction. And I would also recommend to 
the attention of the same the opinion of that great and noble-hearted English- 
man, Mr. W. E. Gladstone, the " Grand Old Man," as he is called. "Every 
system," says Mr. Gladstone, " which places religious education in the back- 
ground is pernicious." Mind you, Mr. Gladstone does not merely say that the 
purely secular system is defective, but he says it is pernicious. 

The present system of education then, in this country, stands condemned 
in the light of the utterances of some of the greatest statesmen the world has 
overproduced. It is a system that rests upon a popular fallacy, that is, that 
you can have a people moral and virtuous without being taught to be such in 
the schools. Nowhere in the world can an instance of this nature be pointed 
to as an example. <Jn the contrary, unbelief is the natural consequence of 
such a system, and the very moment that Christian principles are discarded by 
the masses, that moment the country is in danger, for, as the immortal Wash- 
ington has well remarked, "religion and morality are the indispensable sup- 
ports of the nation." Who are the men, I will ask, from whom national dan- 
ger may be most reasonably expected? Is it from the God-fearing, law-abid- 
ing, moraby-instructed section of the community? Is it not rather from the 
Socialists, the Anarchists and bomb-throwers of the country, and are not 
such i^ersons uniformly recruited from the ranks of the infidels and agnos- 
tics of this land? The history of these worthies, especially in the city of 
Chicago, informs us of what they are capable of attempting, and what might 
be expected if their principles were generally accepted. On pui-ely utili- 
tarian principles, then, I hold that it is a duty tiiat the people of this country 
owe to themselves to see that the present system of common school education 
prevailing in these United States be reformed, for if there be anything of 
value to be attached to the opnions of the eminent statesmen from whom j 
have quoted, it is certain that this system contains the germs of public dis- 
order and of national calamity. The full extent of the evil may not now 
be easily forecast, but if the system be continued, the day will come — it is 
bound to come — when, as unbelieving, socialistic principles will take the place 
of Christian ethics, a storm of popular fury will sweep this land from the At- 
lantic to the Pacific, leaving nothing but ruin and desolation in its track. 

I now turn to another aspect of this educational juestion. Up to this 
I have endeavored to point out to you its shortcomings, its unsuitableness as a 
system of education in a Christian land and its dangers in regard to society. 
I will now advance a step further and will ask you to consider with me its 
unfairness to the Catholics of this Kepublic. Unfortunatelv for us Catholics, 
we are not properly understood in this matter. For one reason or another, 
the general public accredit us with a most intense and insensate hatred of the 
system in all its parts and forms. It is thought that we see nothing but evil 
in everything connected with it. Now this is not exactly our position. It is 
true that we disclaim against the system and mainly on account of its want of 
moral principles, but we are willing to acknowledge that there are things in the 
public school system of education, such as reading, writing and arithmetic, 
that are admirable, and which, if we were in a position to-morrow, we would 
not alter, but can the same be said of everything else? No, indeed. Take 
for instance, the department of history. Is this taught in a way that Catho- 
lics can approve of or that leaves them without a reasonable ground for com- 
plaint? Is there nothing deficient in this branch of instruction? I wish, in- 
deed, I were able to answer in the negative and say no. But unhapiiily I am 
not, for, as now taught, the most important points of Christian history are 
kept carefully out of sight; they are wholly ignored, not being so much as al- 
luded to, and so the system in this respect remains lamentably deficient, sadly 
imperfect, and consequently entirely below the standard that we have a right 
to expect. 

The youth of our times and of our faith are accordingly kept in the pro- 
foundest ignorance of what they ought to know. Thus it is a historic fact 
that all the civilization of the world is Christian and has been created by the 
Catholic Church — who were the men who went forth as the apostles of relig- 
ious and intellectual enlightenment while the nations of Europe were still in a 



Rome's Assaui^t on Our Public Schools. 7 

condition of barbarism? Who lifted woman from Iier lowly condition as 
man's reputed inferior, and placed lier on a level with her lord ami master? 
Who espoused the cause of the degraded slave and succeeded to a great extent 
in striking the fetters from his weary limbs, who, I ask, but the Catholic 
Church and her heroic children. And" are these things and others of a simi- 
lar nature tauglit to the youth of our time in the public schools of this land? 
Nothing of the kind — they are kept studiously from the minds of the pupils. 
Again, wlience has civil liberty been obtained, in what does it consist and 
what are its advantages? Civil liberty, as you are aware, is one of the great- 
est blessings a man can enjoy. It may be delined the protection by law of 
the life and property of the citizen. It consists in the provisions, no repre- 
sentation — no taxation, no trial — no condenmation, no crime — no punish- 
ment. 

These are the basis of the liberties of the people of this land and of all 
enlightened countries to-day in the world, and whence, I ask, have they been 
derived? Is it from a pagan or non-Catholic source? Nothing of tiie kind. 
They have come down to us from the old Catiiolic times, they are as ancient 
as the days of Alfred the (^reat, and when for a time, they were forfeited 
to the people by the exactions of an arbitrary monarch, was it not by a Catho- 
lic people led by an illustrious Catholic archbishop that they were restored 
to their place in the government of the nation, on the ever memorable and 
historic plains of Runnymede. Whence, too, may I ask, have the principles 
of the connnon law of this and other civilized nations been derived? iNIost 
assuredly from the Canon or ecclesiastical law of our ancient Church, for our 
common law, which is the basis of our entire system of jurisprudence, is noth- 
ing but the (levelopment or the ai)plicati()n of the Canon law to civil cases. 
And now, I ask once more, are such things as these ever taught our Catholic 
youth in the public schools of this land? Indeed they are not. They are not 
even hinted at, and so our young people are keiit in the profoundest ignorance of 
what they ought, and have a right to know. May I not fairly ask then, is 
that a just— an equitable system— that keeps our people in shameful ignorance 
of what they ought to know? ' . . . 

And as it is in these instances which I have now mentioned, so it is in every 
other where the honor and the glory of the Catholic Church is concerned. In 
other words, everything that can in any way tell for the credit of our holy relig- 
ion is either kept out of view, or if mentioned at all, is set forth in so meagre 
and half-hearted a way as to convey only a mere moiety of the truth. Hence it 
is not surprising that there are constantly leaving the schools of this country, 
Catholic youths who are in the profoundest ignorance of many of the grand- 
est truths of Christian history, as if these had never been _ written. They 
leave these schools without the remotest idea, without the slightest suspicion 
of what the Catholic Church has done for the interest of science and the dif- 
fusion of general knoweledge. Nay, it is even more likely that they go forth 
with the impression tliat the Catholic Church has been an impediment, a 
stumbling block in the way of learning. And, so, if you ask them who have 
been the greatest patrons of learning in the world, who have doneinost to 
bring knowledge within the reach of the masses, the last names that will occur 
to their minds will be those of the Popes of Rome. 

If y3U ask them who have been the founders of the great universities of 
the world— who pushed forward the landmarks of knowledge— to whom 
are we indebted for the inductive or exjjerimental method of study Ijy which 
such magnificent results have been obtained in the natural and jdiysical 
sciences— if you ask them who were the men who gave the greatestinipetus 
to astronomical study while that department of learning was still in its in- 
fancv — who led the "way in mathematical discovery, in all probability the 
youths of whom I speak will reply by saying that they are matters to which 
"their attention was never directed. And then if yon tell them that the great- 
est names on the roll of science— the Descartes, the Bacons, the Albertus , 
Magnuses, the Gerberts, the Brahes, the Copernicuses, the DeNincis, and a 
host, of others hardly less celebrated, were all, all Catholics; if you tell them 
that to an Egyptian "monk we are indebted for the first c<n-rect ideas that were 



8 Rome's Assault on Our Public Schools. 

ever had regarding the geography of the globe, that to a Eoman monk is to 
be attributed the honor of having introduced into Europe the first system of 
chronology, that to the famous abbot Gassendi belongs the glory of being the 
first to observe the transit of Mercury over the disc of the sun; that to Piazzi, 
a Theatine monk, is to be accorded the praise of having discovered the first of 
the astei'ods; that Orioli, a Catholic jDriest, was the first to determine the orbit of 
the planet Uranus; that it was a Catholic Leverrier, who discovered Neptune, 
the most distant planet of the solar system. If you tell them these and a 
thousand like things equally creditable to our holy religion, all this will come 
upon them like a revelation from Heaven and thej' will acknowledge with 
shame and chagrin that they have never been properly taught. 

And now may I not fairly ask once more, is this a system that we Catho- 
lics can heartily endorse, with which we can be expected to be content? But 
it is not merely that the system of public school education in this country is 
defective in leaving out what it ought to teach, and thereby keeping the 
3'outh of our times in shameful ignorance of what they ought to know, but I 
furthermore charge it as being a vehicle of gross untruth. Don't imagine 
that I have come here to-day to make a statement of this nature without be- 
ing able to substantiate it. Well, many of you may have heard of the com- 
motion that was raised in Boston a couple of years ago by the introduction 
into the public schools of that city of a book in which it was stated that the 
doctrine of indulgences was a pardon for sins, and that as such the Catholic 
Church commended their sale. Now, I need not go so far as Boston to find 
something of a like nature to this. The general history used in the higher 
grades in the public schools on this Coast, up to very recently, and as far as 
I know may even yet, in some instances, has been Barnes' and at page 438 of 
that work the author thus expresses himself on the subject of indulgences: 
"In 1517, there came into Saxony, on^ Tetzel, a Dominican Friar (mark the 
discourteous language, one Tetzel) selling indulgences. The wickedness and 
impudence of this man, who was better fitted to receive than dispense pardon 
for sin, aroused general indignation." Now, if this means anything at all, it 
means that indulgences are a pardon for sin, and that as such they were sold 
by the Catholic Church. Again at page 321, the same writer tells his young- 
readers that it was only in the sixth century that the Pope of Rome became 
the head of theCatholic Church. 

When speaking of the conversion ot the Lombards to Cliristianity, he 
says: " The people, who until the overthrow of the Emperor had been accus- 
tomed to depend upon Rome for political guidance, naturally continued 
to look thither for spiritual control and (now mark you) the Bishop of 
Rome insensibly became head of the Catholic Churcli." That is, it was by 
political circumstances that the Bishop or Pope of Rome became the head of 
our holy Church. What a monstrous, what a shameful and barefaced un- 
truth! Mr. Barnes may be, in social and domestic life, an excellent man, of 
that I have no knowledge, but one thing I do know, and that is that he is not 
qualified to write a general history for the Catholic youth of this Coast. 
Still again, at page 265 of the same work, the same writer com- 
placently tells us that Julian the Apostate, the greatest enemy the Christian 
cause ever had on earth, not even excepting the cruel Nero or the bloody Dio- 
clesian, was an excellent man. And that islhe history that the Catholics of our 
public schools are required to learn, that is the history that Catholic parents 
are required to purchase and put into the hands of their sons and daughters 
to learn. This, I indignantly declare is an insult to our reason, and an indig- 
nity to our faith. It is an evil that should not be tolerated to exist for a day 
in_ our midst. And now what is the remedy for such a condition of things as 
this? What is it that we Catholics Jiave a just right to demand luider the 
circumstances? _ It is beyond all manner of contradiction a change, a reforma- 
tion of the entire system, and such a reformation as will bring "back the sys- 
to its original condition, to its first principles. For it must be remembered 
that when first started, the public school system of this country was not what 
it is now. 

Then it was Christian, now it is anti-Christian. Then it was religious, 



Rome's Assault on Our Public Schools. 9 

now it is secular. Then, in a word, tlie persons having it in charge, proceeded 
on the lines of making virtuous citizens hy the dual process of moral com- 
bined with secular instruction, Avhile now the same is attempted ))y purelv 
secular means. Again the Catholics claim and call for a reformation of this 
matter for the reason that, as now administered, it is in direct conflict with 
the spirit and letter of the constitutional law of this Republic, which secures 
to each of us, independent of creed or persuasion, an absolute freedom from 
all religious intolerance, while here we have forced on us by tlie will of the 
luajority a system of instruction which we are ready to show has been and is 
robbing our little ones by the thousand and by the million of what is dearer 
to them than their very existence — the faith of their fathers. Who gave the 
State tlie al)solute dominion over the finances of the wJiole country ior such 
an ignoble purpose as this? Was it the object for which the public school 
system of this country was established, to destroy the faith of the Catholic 
people? 

It is a principle laid down in that magnificent document, the Declaration 
of Independence, drawn up in 177(>, tluit there shall be no taxation without 
representation. It had been the violation of that principle on the part of 
the King of England that led to the achievement of the liberties of this coun- 
try. For be it understood, that it was not the taxation of the colonies, but 
the taxation without representation that led to the war of Independence. 
When, then, you support or indorse a system of this nature, you strike at tlie 
very root of constitutional liberty — you sap the very foundation on which our 
national greatness as a great liberal nation repose, and so sooner or later, the 
evil consequences of such a proceeding are certain to be felt — sooner or later 
the bitter fruits of such a policy are certain to be tasted. What, then, is the 
duty of the loyal, (xod-tearing Christian men of this land? It is to make corn- 
common cause against this common enemy. It is to check by every means in 
their power the i>nwai'd march of the liosts of unbelief and infidelity tiiat 
are now marching forward with such giant strides through the length and 
breadth of this great nation, and for the existence of which the common 
school system is mainly responsible. 

Do not imagine tiiat I am alone in entertaining this idea of the spread of 
unbelief and the cause to wliich it should be attributed. It has been publicly 
avowed and frankly ackncTwIedged by the very mouthpiece and apostle of 
infidelity in this land, for has not tlie liater of everytliing Christian, Col. R. 
Ingersoll, openly declared that he considered the public school buildings of 
this country as the future cathedrals of the nation. The duty of all loyal, 
God-fearing, Christian men, then, I repeat it, is to make common cau.se 
against the common foe. We should be one and all ready to sink our differ- 
ences, to put aside our prejudices and to stand shoulder to shoulder in our eflbrts to 
keep this land Christian. If the men of other denominations are wise they will 
join with us in this struggle for reform, for if they do not the loss will be 
greater for them tiian for us. For while we, with the efforts we are making, 
will keep a very large proportion of our people, they will lie completely 
abandoned by their own. Do not imagine tliat I am alone in entertaining 
this opinion. It has been acknowledged by some of the ablest and farthest- 
seeing men of the Protestant coniinunity. And not to go beyond the city of 
San Francisco for instance, the Rev. Dr. Piatt, of Grace Church, used the fol- 
lowing remarkable words twelve years ago in connection with this affair: 

Extract from Dr. Piatt's sermon; "As Protestants we sliould Christianize 
our education, because, flrst, if our secular schools were intended exclusively 
to build up Protestantism, they are a great blunder, for they are breaking it 
down. * * * Secular schools in the interest of Protestantism are a fatal 
blunder. * * * Secularism saves nothing, not even itself. As to Protes- 
tantism it is only a question of time wiien our present system of jjublic 
schools will render it a dead factor. The issue is by these schools narrow- 
ing the controversy down to Romanism on the one hand and inridelity on the 
other. * "'•■ * As American citizens, we should Christianize our education. 
When religion fails, all ftiils. True liberty and immorality are strangers, but 
immorality and despotism are allies." 



lo Rome's Assaui^t on Our Public Schools. 

These are remarkable words and deserve to be laid to heart and carefully 
studied by the entire Protestant community. 

In fine, then, we Catholics call for a reformation of the public school system 
of education, because it is dangerous to the well-being of the community, be- 
cause it is the parent of infidelity, an abridgement of our constitutional rights 
and destructive of parental autliority. 

And now before I leave this place allow me, Brothers of the Christian 
schools, to say a word to you in particular. To-day you have taken your 
stand before the community in the great work that you have proposed to 
accomplish on this Coast. Every eye is now upon you and much is expected, 
fi'om you. As I have remarked at the outset, you have much in your favor, 
you commence under the most favorable auspices. Climate, location, the 
sympathy of the community, and the approval of superiors, all are on your 
side. If yon fiiil the failure will be your own work, it will be attributed to 
yourselves. But I have no fears for j'our success. I have known you for 
twenty long years, I have lived under the same roof with you, and I know 
your system of teaching, and so repeat it, I have no fears for your success. 
But do not imagine that your college will attain distinction and reputation 
without labor on your part. In the work of instruction you will have many 
and able competitors, and it will recjuire all the energy and all the ability of 
which you are possessed to keep ahead in this contest for honorable distinction. 
Let then, the good religion, the glory of your Institute and the honor of your 
profession, stimulate you to worthy and generous exertion in the cause in 
which you are now embarked. 

Brothers of the Christian schools, children of De LaSalle, remember your 
traditions, recall the glory of your Institute. For two hundred years your 
society has stood before tlie world as one of the greatest powers for good in the 
church of God. Let it not be said of you then, that while your brethren have 
succeeded in every otlier part of the globe, you, and you alone, failed on the 
coast of California. But, no, failure is a word that has not yet been written in 
your history nor shall you be the first to write it. Succeed you shall, the fu- 
ture shall bear witness to this, and St. Mary's of Oakland shall thus become an 
honor to your name and a glory to the diocese of San Francisco. God speed 
you then and God bless vou. 



"Render therefore unto Cicmr the things ithich are C'rrsar'f^; (oid unto God the 
thim/sthat are God's."— 'Matt. 22 •.21. 



Semon by Rev. E. R. Dille, D. D. 

Delivered at Oakland, Cal., Aug. 25, 1889. 



All true Americans accept the history and pliilosophy of Amer- 
ican institutions, and are loyal to those institutions ; and it is certain that 
among them our syste<n of free popular education holds the foremost place. 
The American doctrine is that the State, which it the highest of all human 
organizations, is not only entitled to educate, but where manhood suffrage 
prevails is solemnly bound to educate all its 3'outh for the responsibilities and 
duties of citizenship. Says Professor Fisher of Yale College: "The State has a 
right and a duty wliich it may not abdicate^ to guard its own existence, and to 
provide for wha^ is essential to its well-being. There can be no parental claim 
which nullities that right, for the child has duties to perform as a member of 
the civil community, as well as obligations within the family circle." 

Fatiier Gleeson tells us that the common school is of atheistic origin. 
The Pilgrim P'athers were the foiuiders of American free schools, and it is 
news, indeed, that they were atheists. 

Lord Macaiduy once said in Parliament: "Illustrious forever in history are 
the founders of the commonwealtli of Massachusetts; though their love of 
freedom of conscience was illimitable and indestructible, they could see noth- 
ing servile or degrading in the principle that the State should take upon itself 
the education of the people. In the year lfi42 they passed tlie first enactment 
on the subject in the preamble of wliich they distinctly pledged themselves to 
the principle." The history of our public schools is one with the liistory of 
our country, and it is the height of insolent assumption for the sworn minions 
of a foreign despot to attack a system about which our fathers and our states- 
men have uttered words like these: 

The great and good George Wasliington said, "Against tlie insidious wiles 
of foreign influence I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens, the jealousy 
of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience 
prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of a Kepublican 
government." 

Jefterson declared nearly a hundred years ago that free schools were an 
essential parr — one of the columns, as he expressed it — of the Republican 
edifice, and that without instruction free to all, the sacred flame of liberty 
could not be kept burning in the hearts of Americans. 

Madison over sixty years ago said, "A popular government without popu- 
lar information or means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or tragedy 
or perhaps both." 

James A. (larfield said in his letter of acceptance in July. 1880, "What- 
ever helps the Nation can justly aflbrd should be generously given to aid the 
States in supporting common schools, but it would be unjust to our people and 
dangerous to our institutions to apply any portion of the revenues of the 
Nation or of the States to the support of sectarian schools." 

U. S.. Grant said, "Encourage free schools and resolve that not one dollar 
in money appropriated to their support, no matter how raised, shall be appro- 
priated to the support of any sectarian school. Kesolved that either the State 
or Nation, or both combined, shall support institutions of learning sufficient 
to afford to every child growing up in the land the opportunity of a good 
common school education." 

Our common schools, then, are the bulwarks of our civil and religious 
liberty and of the purity and integrity of our republican institutions, they 



On p. 12, line lo, read, "must educate our uiasters," etc. 



12 Rome's Assaui^t on Our Public Schools. 

alone can guard the Nation from tliat illiteracy which now to millions of 
Americans makes the Bible and the Constitution of the country a sealed book . 
And when dismayed at the ignorance and superstition brought to us from for- 
eign lands and dumped by the shipload upon our shores, we tliank God and 
take courage for that wonderful assimilator, the public school, into which the 
children of all nations enter and come out Americans. 

In a government like ours, where political power resides in and springs 
from the people we must educate, since intelligence in the ruler is the first essen- 
tial of good government. With us the rulers, the sovereigns are voters, and we 
our masters, or submit to that worst of despotisms, the tyranny of 
ignorant and vicious majorities. In a government like ours, to leave the 
people uneducated, or to allow them to be educated in foreign schools and 
with foreign ideas, is to invite certain destruction to all we hold dear as patriots 
and as Americans. 

Dr. Schaff once said in one of his great speeches: "This countrvhad its first 
conflict for its independent existence; its second was for its unbroken unity; the 
third will be for its institutions." Thanks be to God and the fathers of our Re- 
public, it achieved its independent existence, it preserved its unity, and it will 
through Heaven's help, maintain its institutions. The most cherished of our 
institutions, our free schools, are being assailed to-day in every State ii) this 
Union by insidious methods and infamous political deals, in which American 
principles and rights are being bartered by corrui3t politicians for foreign votes. 
There is to-day an organized and persistent attempt, under foreign leadership- 
and under the mask of devotion to liberty of conscience and freedom of work 
ship, to subject the infant wards of the State to proselyting influences and dis- 
cipline, and to prevent, by spiritual threats and undue influence tlie attendance 
of the children of to-day, who are the voters of to-morrow, upon our public 
schools, and to pervert to sectarian purposes the sacred school funds. 

There is an irreconcilable and irrepressible conflict between tiie Roman 
Catholic and the American theories of education, and it is for the American 
people to say which of them shall go to the wall, for it is war to the death 
^bet.ween them. 

The Romanist theory of education is: 

I. All education, both secular and religious, is the exclusive function of the 
Papal Church, to be administered in schools under the sole direction and 
supervision of the chui'ch. 

II. In a non-Catholic country like ours, where the church cannot control 
the whole field of education, Roman Catholics must establish parochial schools 
for Roman Catholic children, and tbey have a i-ight to a share of the public 
school funds, to be applied to the support of parochial schools, over which the 
State shall have no control. 

III. Failing in this, that Catholics who support parochial schools ought not 
to be taxed for public schools. 

IV. That wlign Catholics are so taxed, no text books of instruction injuri- 
ous to Catholic interests should be allowed. 

On the other hand the American theory of education is: 

I. That secular education is the function of the State — the duty of 
self preservation and sfelf development requiring the State to make 
such education uniform and compulsory. Religious education belongs to the 
family and the church, and the State permits all denominations who desire to 
do so, to establish church schools, colleges, and seminaries at their own expense, 
but it is not consistent with true loyalty to the reiDublic nor with the public 
safety, for any denomination to maintain schools in which supreme allegiance to 
a foreign ruler is daily taught, and where the coming voter is trained, as Mr. 
Gladstone says all Catholics are, to hold his loyalty and civil duty at the mercy 
of another. Therefore every parochial school ought to be closed by law. 

II. That while the common schools may teach the common principles of 
Christian morals, as does the common law, they are not to give distinctively 
denominational or sectarian religious instruction. The second amendment to 
the Constitution provides that Congress shall nake no law respecting the estab- 
lishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. 



Rome's Assault on Our Public Schools. 13 

III. Tliat the school funds are not to be divided, and that those who con- 
tribute to private or parochial schools are not tO' be exempt from taxation for 
the public schools. 

IV. That State supervision should be so far extended to all private schools 
as to prevent the mischievous or misleading instruction of those who are to be 
the future citizens of the State. 

The war between these two diametrically opposite theories of education has 
been going on for forty years. In 1840 Bisliop Hughes demanded a division of 
the school funds of the State of New York, on the ground that the consciences 
of Catholics were outraged by the reading of the Protestant scriptures in the 
schools. Rufus Choate said at tliat time: "Expel the Bible from the schools? 
Never, wliile enough of Plymoutli Rock remains to make a gun Hint !" 

Nevertheless they were expelled from the schools of New York and Cincin- 
nati, and from most of the sciiools of the country, and six States, our own among 
them, put a jjrovision in their constituti<;ns forever banishing the Bible from 
the schools. Were the Romanists satisfied? No, they at once raised the cry, 
"The sciiools are godless!" It was not because they were afraid of the Bible or 
tlie Lord's Prayer that they attacked tiie schools, but because they objected to 
Catholic children and Protestant children sitting side by side, and studying 
the same books, and breathing the same atmosphere of freedom and imbibing 
the same modern ideas. They know very well that wlien their children feel 
the electric touch of liberty tliey will not believe in holy water and the 
mummery of tiie mass any more. It is not that they want the Douay version 
of the Bible; they do net have that in their parochial schools; the catechism 
.suits their purpose better. They have no use for tlie Bible in any form. 
What they want is to bring the public schools under suspicion as irreligious 
and ungodly, and then to build up Romish schools on their ruins. The Cath- 
olic Tablet said after tlie Bible was banished inCincinnati: "The expulsion of 
the Bible does not meet nor in any degree lessen our objection to the public 
school system." The Freeman's Journal says; "Let the public school system 
go to wliere it came from — the devil." 

In this contest Rome has scored several victories, and this makes her the 
bolder in her claims to-day. In New Haven and New Britain, Conn., in 
Manchester, N.H., and in Poughkeepsie, N. Y., the school funds were acutually 
turned over to the priests and Sisters of Mercy, and the parochial sciiools were 
supported by the public funds. 

In the city of New Y'^ork during the last seventeen years $22,932, 086 has 
been paid out of the public treasury to Roman Catholic institutions, and among 
these were fifty-six parochial schools. The Tweed ring gave these schools in 
one year $5800,000. And Connelly, Sweeney, Tweed and A. Oakey Hall gave 
the church that magnificent block on Fifth Avenue, worth millions of dollars, 
on which the great Cathedral is now being built ad majorem del gloriain. To- 
day 2.T per cent, of the entire tax levy of the city of New York and 6 per cent, 
of the entire exjaense of the city government is paid to the Roman Catholic 
Church, and the Catholics pay but 10 per cent, of the taxes of the city. They 
receive from the public funds ten times as much as all the other denominations 
together. And tlie same state of things exists in all our rum-and-Rome-and- 
Boss-ruled cities. 

Flushed with these victories that naked sword of .Jesuitism whose hilt, says 
tiie Encyclopedia Britannica, is in Rome and its point everywhere is bared to 
strike down our school system and the scabbard has been thrown away. It is 
war to the knife and the knife to the hilt. As long ago as 1858 Archbishop 
Hughes, in a lecture in New York, said "the public school is a disgrace to the 
civilization of tiie eighteenth century." Pope Pius IX in his encyclical of 
1864 condemiiied those institutions wliich Americans hold dearer than life 
itself — free speech, free press, a free church, free schools and a free govern- 
ment — as the liberty of perdition, impious, absurd and erroneous doctrines, 
detestable sentiments pregnant with tlie most deplorable evils. 

In 1872 Catholic children were taken out of the public schools in Holyoke, 
Mass., and about the same time the Bishop of Cleveland commanded his 
clergy to refuse the sacraments to all who jiatronized the public schools. 




14 Rome's Assaui^t on Our Pubwc Schools. 

The last Plenaiy Council held at Boston, 1884, commanded all Catholics to 
patronize and support only parochial schools. That decree is being executed. 
Parochial schools are rising from sea to sea and to-daj^ half a million Catholic 
children are in them. 

A Catholic University with an endowment of $8, 000,000 has been established 
at Washington. Monsiguor Capel, the apostle to the "genteels," an eminent 
emissarj'^ of Eomanism, incites a Catliolic outbreak by this treasonable lan- 
guage: 

"The time is not far away when the Roman Catholics of the Eepublic of 
the United States, at the order of the Pope will refuse to pay the school tax, 
and will send bullets thi-ough the breasts of government agents rather than 
pay it." 

Father Walker, of St. Lawrence's Eoman Catholic Church, Kew York, said: 
"The public schools are nurseries of vice; they are godless schools, and they 
who send their children to tliem cannot expect the mercy of God. I would as 
soon administer the sacrament to a dog as to such Catholics." 

Priest McCarthy said in a sermon reported in the Boston Journal, Dec. 23, 
] 887: "The public school is a national fraud. It must cease to exist, and the 
day will come when it will cease to exist." 

According to Sadlier's Roman Catholic Almanac for 1888, there were 2606 
parochial schools in this country, and 511,063 pupils in them. In the Catho- 
lic schools and institutions of San Francisco there are 10,000 children and 
youth. I do not know the statistics of Oakland in this regard, but we have 
just seen St. Mary's College, costing f!200,000. inaugurated with a great flourish 
of trumpets and by a malignant attack upon the public schools. 

On the 8tli of May, 1888, Rev. Father Metcalf, rector of a Catholic church 
in South Boston, coniplained to the Boston School Board that Mr. Travis, a 
teacher in the English High School, in the coui'se of a lesson in history, had 
made oflensive statements in regard to the Roman Catholic Doctrine and prac- 
tice of indulgences. The subservient school board dismissed Mr. Travis from 
his position in the school and ordered Swinton's history discontinued as a text 
book. Think of it! In Boston in the Nineteenth centur>, under shadow of 
Bunker Hill monument, a public school teacher is compelled to take a true 
text book of history under his arm and march out with it because he dared to 
teach the truth of history about indulgences, and another teacher in the same 
school goes over to Rome because he says he has a familj'-to support, and he is 
afraid of losing his place. I tell you Swinton's history told the truth about 
the indulgences. I am glad Rome has the grace to be ashamed of its history 
on that question, but it will tind it a big job to blot out the record, for that 
record is Avritten in blood. Father Gleeson objects to this passage in one of 
our text books: "In 1517 there came into Saxony one Tetzel, a Dominican friar, 
selling indulgences. The wickedness and impudence of this man, w'lio was 
better fltted to receive than dispense pardon of sin, aroused general indignation." 

"Now," said Father Gleeson with an air of virtuous indignation, "if this 
means anything it means that indulgences were a pardon of sin and that they 
were sold by the Catholic Church." Were and are, reverend father, and that 
no one knows better than yourself, only that it suits your purpose to attempt to 
mystif}-^ the whole question with Jesuitical subterfuges. IIow in the face of 
history these men can have the audacity to say that Rome never sold indulg- 
ences passes comprehension. 

Swinton's History was proscribed, because on page 320 it says in a foot 
note, " These indulgences were, in the early ages of the church, remissions of 
the penances imposed upon persons whose sins had brought scandal upon the 
community. But in process of time they were represented as actual pardons 
of guilt, and the purchaser of indulgences was said to be delivered from all 
his sins." 

The question is, is this statement of Swinton true or false? Was an indul- 
gence at the time and place of which Mr. Swinton speaks (Germany, 16th 
century) understood to mean a remission of sins? Why, unless it was the 
ninety-five theses of Luther, which were in the main directed against indul- 
gences, had no meaning and the reformation itself had no explanation. Some 



Rome's Assault on Our Public Schools. 15 

things are settled in tliis 19th century, and the great prineiides of tlie retornia- 
lion arenolono'er an open (juestion witlitiie American people. lianke, whotlio' 
not a_,Catholic, is an authority among Catliolics says:" The reformation maybe 
said to have originated in tiie violent shock which Luther's religious feeling re- 
ceived from the sale of indulgences," which he subsequently described as "the 
doctrine of a forgiveness of sins for money." Eui were indulgences sold? 
The statement that they were shocks Father ( Heeson very much. Let me 
quote Cardinal (ribbons on that point. In "The Faith of Our Fatiiers," he 
says (page 390): " I will not deny tliat indulgences have been abused." He 
then quotes the Council of Trent as follows: " Wisjiing to correct and amend 
the abuses which liave crept into tliem, and on occasion of wiiich tliis signal 
name of indulgences is blasj)hemed by heretics, tlie holy synod enjoins, in 
general, by the present decree, that all wicked trafKc for obtaining them, 
which has been tlie fruitful source of many abuses among Christian i)eople, 
should be wholly abolished." We thus cannot ask any stronger corroboration 
of Swinton than this from Cardinal Gibbons liimself. He practically ac- 
knowledges, and so does the Council of Trent, a " wicked traffic" in indul- 
gences by the hands of John Tetzel in ( Jermany, which gave rise to tiie Pro- 
testant Keformation under IMartin J^uther. Most important of all, take the 
evidence of honest Pope Adrian \^1, the successor of Leo X. crowned in 1522, 
when Germany was all ablaze with Lutherism. At the diet of Nuremberg, 
summoned to deal with Luther, this honest Dutch Pope Adrian declared 
roundly, through his legate, that "these disorders had sprung from the sins of 
men, more especially from the sins of pi'iests and prelates. Even in the holy 
chair" said he, "many horiible crimes have been committed. The contagious 
disease, spreading from the head to the members, fronT*the Pope to lesser 
prelates, has spread far and wide, so that scarcely any one is to be found who 
does right and who is free from infectionr" 

A Catholic who had not the manliness to come out into the open, but 
skulked under that coward's signature, an assumed name, either because he 
was ashamed of his cause or his argument, said in a recent newspaper article, 
that an indulgence does not authorize a man to conniiit sin, but only delivers 
him from the penalty of it when it has been committed. Where is the differ- 
ence? What thief wants permission to steal if, by dividing the swag, he can 
escape the i)enalties? 1 give the definition of the Council of Trent, the 
delinition of tiie C-atholic Church: "'An indulgence is the remission, in whole 
or in part, of the temporal i)enalty which is due for sins, conferred by an au- 
thorized agent of the Church, and having its ground in the treasury of merits 
which is in the keeping of the Church." Now when Catiuilics tell us Protestants 
that the temporal, that is, the terminable penalty of sin is alone remitted by in- 
dulgences tliey strive to carry the impression that the temporal penalty of sin 
simply consists in the ecclesiastical censures and penances wliicli the Church 
imposes for the sake of disciplining its subjects, and which it certainly has a 
right to remit. T?ut the truth is, and I defy any reputable Catholic to deny it, 
tlie temporal penalty cancelled by an indulgence may not only be an ecclesias- 
tical penalty, l)ut may be one demanded by divine justice, and by the will of 
God. Butler and ]\Iilner, Roman Catholic theologians, tell us that the tein- 
jjoral punishment remitted by indulgences, includes not only evil in this life, 
but temporal suffering in the next, which is called ])urgatory. 

Let me quote their exact words. Charles Butler says: " The Roman Cath- 
olic Church teaclies that God frequently remits the essential guilt of sin and 
the eternal punishment incurred by it, but leaves a temporal punishment to 
be incurred by the sinner; that this tenqioral punishment may consist either 
of evil in this life, or of temporal suffering in the next — which temporal suf- 
fering in the next we call purgatory; that the temj^oral punishment may con- 
sist of both these intiictions, and that the Church has received power from 
God to remit them either wholly or partially" 

John Milner says: " It is the received doctrine of the Church that an in- 
dulgence, when truly gained is not barely a relaxation of the canonical pen- 
ance enjoined by the Church, but also an actual remission by God himself, of 
the whole or part of the temporal punishment due to it in his sight. The 



1 6 Rome's Assaui^t on Our Pubwc Schools. 

contrary opinion, though held by some theologians, has been condemned by 
Leo X and Pius VI. This is taught by Thomas Aquinas (Sum. Theol. Ill 
Sup. 25 : 1), by Leo X in his bull against Luther's teachings, and by the Coun- 
cil of Trent (Session V^I. Decree on Justiiication). 

Mosheiui tells us that Pope Leo X, in order to carry on the expensive 
structure of St. Peter's at Rome, published indulgences with a plenary remis- 
sion to all who should contribute to that object. The right of promulgating 
these indulgences in Germany, together with a commission on the sale of 
them was granted to Albert of Metz, Archbishop of Magdeburg, who se- 
lected for his chief agent this man John Tetzel, for whose memory (Heaven 
save the mark!) Father Gleeson enters the lists with lance in rest. Tetzel 
boasted that he had saved more souls by his indulgences than St. Peter had 
by his preachings, assured his customers that their crimes, liowever enormous, 
W'Ould be forgiven, and that if one should even violate the mother of God, 
the indulgences would free him from both guilt and punishment. This was 
the form of absolution given by Father Gleeson's patron saint, at whose 
shrine many a Protestant school teacher and school book has been martyred. 

" I, Tetzel, by the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of his apostles 
Peter and Paul, and of the most holy Pope, do absolve thee, first, from all 
ecclesiastical censures, in whatever manner they have been incuri-ed; and 
from all thy sins, transgressions, and excesses, however enormous they may 
be. I remit to thee all pttnishment which thou deservedst in purgatory on 
their account, and I restore thee to the holy sacraments of the Church, and to 
that innocence and purity which thou posseisedst at baptism — so that when 
thou diest the gates of punishment shall be shut aud the gates of paradise 
opened, and if thou shalt not die at the present, this grace shall remain in mil 
force when thou art at the point of death." He declared, this friend of Fa- 
ther Gleeson's, that the moment the monev tinkled in the chest, the soul for 
whose release it was paid instantly escaped from the place of torment and as- 
cended to Heaven. 

Father Gleeson is estopped from disavowing Tetzel, for the Church is sem- 
per idem (always the same), and Leo X, who commissioned Tetzel, was an in- 
fallable Pope. His bull, " De Induigentis," thus defines indulgences: " The 
Koman Pontiff, vicar ol^ Christ on earth, can for reasonable causes, by the 
power of the keys, grant to the faithful, whether in life or in purgatory, in- 
dulgences out of the superabundant merits of Christ and the saints" What 
blasphemy, to make the atonement of Christ a matter of barter and sale! 
Clement V granted to all pilgrims who should die on the road to Rome dur- 
ing his jubilee year, a plenary absolution of all sins and commanded the 
angels to carry them straight to Heaven. 

Thus the Lateran Council of 1123, the first ecumenical council held in the 
West, promised to those who should go to Jerusalem, and aid efiiciently in its 
recovery from the infidel, remission of their sins as well as protection of 
their property. This is promised without specifying any religious condition 
whatever. Scarcely more guarded was the promise made by Pojie Julius II 
in 1505, that those who should join the campaign of the King of Portugal 
should have full remission of all their sins and "enjoy eternal felicity in the 
society of angels. 

Indulgences not sold? Why, the practice is to-day in Catholic countries 
as scandalous as the Catholic historian Lingard declares it was in the time of 
Luther. In the leading churches in Pome you will see over the door in large 
letters: Indulgentia plenaria et perpettia pro vivis et defunctis. As you 
are not as familiar with Latin as Father Gleeson's congregation, I will trans- 
late that for you, " Full and pierpetual indulgences for the living and the 
dead." In the Church of St. Maria del Pace, it reads: " Every mass cele- 
brated at this altar frees a soul from purgatory." In the Church of the Three 
Fountains, there is this inscription over a box: " To pay for masses to deliver 
souls from purgatory," and in the Church of St. Croce: " Every mass cele- 
brated at this altar frees a soul from purgatory, by order of Pope Gregory 
XIII." And I affirm that an indulgence is a permission to commit sin. 

Xot long ago, you know the Duke of Aosta fell in love with his niece and 



Rome's Assault on Our Pubuc Schools. 17 

married her. He well knew that such a marriage was incestuous and unlaw- 
ful in both Church and 8tate. For a similar offence Popes Celestine 111 and 
Innocent ill broke up the royal faniily of Spain, and ordered mider penalty 
of excommunication, llie wife to be torn from linsband and children because 
of a marriage within forbidden degrees. But the Duke of Aosta sent the 
present i^ope !?ol),OJiJ and obtained a dispensation — that is, in plain language 
a permission to commit incest. Was that a right to commit sin or noi? I 
hope Father (Heeson will give us a categorical answer to that question. 

Well, Mr. Travis and Swinton's History went out of the I'oston schools 
for telling tlie ugly trutli about Rome, and a blessed thing it was, for it woke 
up the old Puritan spirit, and tlie Puritans, thank (i od, have captured Ijosta gl. 
Wiiom the gods destroy, they first make mad, antlj it will'be a sorry Hay of 
the Pope's legions wiien our patient and long-suffering peojjle once wake up vAA i/' 
to the conspiracy being engineered from liome against our public schools. "A . 

In Boston, thank God, the women vote on the election of school boards, anci 
last Septendjer 25,0UU women registered in Boston, though only 2,000 had 
been registered before! Noihing could stay the tide of public indignation! 
In vain the priests mustered their forces and instructed them in the confes- 
sional to vote to put down the Yankees, but the Yankees carried the day. 
Well, the priests have succeeded t)etter in San Francisco than they did in Bos- 
ton. Two years ago Professor Jlenry Sanger, then vice-principal of the 
Girl's High School, was dismissed from the place, or rather forced, as Joiin 
Swett was, recently, to send in his resignation. I will give you Mr. .Sanger's 
own words. In his letter he says: " Wlien on the complaint of Rev. Fatlier 
Gallagher, I was suspended last August (that is, two years ago), without prop- 
er trial, and in flagrant violation of the rules and regulations of the Board 
of Education, I intended, though I had been promptly reinstated, to resign at 
once, my position as teacher of tlie San Francisco llirl's High School. 

"The earnest solicitations of leading citizens, the almost unanimous sym- 
pathy of my scholars, irrespective of creed or nationality, the hope that the 
future might bring a change, prevented me at that time from following my 
own inclination and serving my individual interests. But now, as in my opin- 
ion as a teaeher, the new course prescribed for tiie Girl's High School is one 
beueatli the grade of a higii school, and as it cuts out the histoi\v of the Pro- 
testant Reformation from English history, a matter at once humiliating to me 
as an American citizen and embarrassing to me as a teaclier, I now resign my 
position as assistant teacher of the San Francisco Girl's High School, to 
take effect at any time most convenient to your li()norable board, not later 
than the first of August of this year." _ J^ 

How long are American people going to stand this meddling of a lot of 
foreign priests bound by an oath of allegiance to a foreign ruler with their 
dearest concerns — the education of their children? Last year Professor Lam- 
bert, assistant principal of the Lincoln school, had to resign because he united 
with the American party. It is a crime nowadays to be an American unless 
one is a hyphenated one. We ought not to admit anybody to tliis country 
unless they will agree to leave that hyidien behind them! All right to belong 
to the Clan-na-Gael, but not to the American ])arty. _ _ " 

A Catholic priest complained of John Swett, principal of the Girl's High 
vSchool, San Francisco, a man who has grown gray in the educational work of 
this State and in serving her highest interests, because he would not sup))ress_ 
history, and this year he was compelled to resign. Professor Templeton of 
our own CJhurch, one of the first educators of this State for the past tliirty 
years, for thirteen years a teacher of the P>oys' High School in San Francisco, 
has just been dismissed to make room for one of the pets of the Roman Catholic 
bosses that rule San Francisco, one of wiiom lias just died in the odor of sanc- 
tity. A week or two ago Dr. Harcourt, my fearless confrere, in Howard Street 
Church, San Francisco, learned that three Prostestant teachers in the little 
village of Half Moon Bay and vicinity were dismissed for no other offense 
than that they were Protestants, and three far inferior Catholic teachers were 
substituted for them. 

And so this damnable work of coercing teachers and parents and children 



KjL/1-j 



1 8 Rome's Assault on Our Public Schools. 

goes on. And yet Fatlier Gleeson lias the eiirontery to stand h]i and tell us 
that our |iid)lic sehuol system is a mighty monstrous insatiahle Moloch. 
"That it is not only uneliristian but anti-Christian, intidel in character and 
tendenry — thousinids support it because they get their livelihood from it." 
(and tluil reminds dt' what Dr. ■Mc<Tiynn of ^'e\v York says of the parochial 
schools, and he knows as nuich about them as any living man). 

He says; "The extraordinary zeal manifested for getting up those parochial 
schools and institutions is. Hrst of all, prompted by jealousy and rivalry of our 
public scliools and instiiutions, and by the desire to keep children and other 
bcneficiariofniiii the hitter, ^^ecundly, by thedesire to make em])loymentforand 
give cniiifortable liomes to the rapidly increasing hosts of monks and nuns 
who make so-called education and so-called charity their regular business, for 
which a veiw common experience shows that they have but little rpialification 
beyond tlieir ))rolessional stamp and garb. It is not risking much to say if 
there -were no public schools, there would be very few parochial schools, and 
the ( atholic cliildren, for all the churchmen would do for them, would grow up 
in brutish ignorance of letters, and a common-place of clun-chmen here would 
be the doctrine taught by the Jesuits of Italy in their periodical magazine, 
the Civiia Caiholica, tliat the people do not need to learn to read; that all 
tbcy need is lireud and the catechism." 

Father (41eeson goes on to say that the increase of crime, immorality, and 
vice in this land is to he laid at the door of our public schools — that in Mas- 
sachusetts, for example, where the Roman legions were recently i-outed horse, 
foot, antl dragoons, there is actually one arrest to every twenty-nine of the 
population, and all because the youth of the old Bay State are not gathered 
into parochial schools under the fostering care of Mother Church. 

I am glad iMassachusetts is referred to, and comparison between public and 
parish scliools in that State challenged, for I have some instructive statistics on 
that very point, compiled from the census of 1870 by Hon. Dexter A. Haw- 
kins: 

To everv 10,000 inhabitants: I"itei'- Pau Crim- 

' ates. pars, nials. 

Ftoman Catholic schools produced 1400 410 160 

Public schools of twentv-one States 350 170 75 

Puldic schools of Massachusetts 71 49 11 

I venture the statement that 75 per cent, of the arrests leather Glee- 
son refers to were of his own co-religionists, and that a clear majority of 
them enjoyed the advantage of attendance upon parish schools in this or the 
old country. He cites certain statistics proving the alarming increase of crime 
in Massachusetts between 1850 and 1854, and attributes this to the public 
schools. Ihit how is it that while the public scliools have existed in Massachu- 
setts evei- since 1642, there should have been so little crime, comparatively 
speaking, until the year 1850, when it began to accelerate at such a fearful 
rate? Why, it was precisely from 1850 on that the immigration of foreigners, 
especially Irish Roman Catholics, reached its highest in Massachusetts and New 
York, and, as observations and statistics abundantly prove, it is from this class 
of citizens that our almshouses, reformatories, and jails have been principally 
recruited. 

But Father Gleeson's diatribes are only the echo of the utterances of able 
men in the same communion. 

At a meeting held in St. Louis the Irish Catholic Benevolent Union, 
passed the following resolutions: 

^'Eesolved, That the present system of public schools, ignoring all super- 
natural authority and making God the first knowledge, the last thing to be 
1-arned, is a curse to our country, and a floodgate of atheism, of sensuality 
and of civil and social corruption." On that occasion Priest Phelan said, 
"The public men of America were educated in the public schools and were 
exhibitions of the system, and they were the most corrupt and dishonest of 
any country in the world. Men can steal in this country with impunity, pro- 
vided the amount is large enough. That the children of the country go heels 
over liead to the devil, must be attributed to the education they receive in the 



Rome'.s Assault on Our Public Schools. 19 

pul)lic sfliools, wliicli does not fit theiu for the teiuptutions of the worUl. In 
these schools men of science iire honored and enlogized, hut thenauieof Jesus 
Clirist is not allowed to be mentioned with reverence. These cliildren turn 
out to be learned hoi-se thieves, scholastic counterfeiters, and well posted in all 
schemes of deviltry." 

Isn't it strange that these priests will allow members of their fiock to have 
anytliing to do with such an institution? If Father (jrleeson has such an 
opinion of our public schools he ought to take his parishioners oii' the board 
and out of the department and wash iiis hands of the whole iniquitous 
business. 

If, as Father (jleesou says (and he was applauded ])y the Archbishop and 
by more tiiau a score of priests when lie said it ) it is a sin for a Catholic to 
send his children to the puldic school, then it is a sin for any Catholic to have 
a iiand in their administration, and simple honesty will command him to with- 
draw from the J>oard of Fducation, it he belongs to it, or from the school 
room if he or she be a teacher. The public school must be in the hands of its 
friends. No man should be tolerated for a day in the administration of our 
public schools who will not send his children to them if he has children. 

I tell you felhnv citizens, tliese statements are an infamous libel ui)on our 
public school system. Tlicy are lies that all the holy water in Oakland can't 
sanctify. 

We are quite willing to conqjare our public men who have been educated 
in our free schools with the public men who iiave been educated in the schools 
of Rome, fall the roll of the graduates Rome's schools have turned out: 
Tweed, Sweeney, Connolly, A. Oakey Hall, Piggott the perjurer, ()' Donovan 
Rossa, the Clan-na-gael, J(jiin Kelley, John Morrissey, John L.Sullivan, Zach. 
Montgomery. Boss lliggins, IJoss Buckley. Siuill I call the roll of the P>oodle 
Aldermen oi" New York and Chicago? Go visit them in their cells and in 
Canada and their brogue will tell you where they were educated. Does Father 
(ileeson tell us thai the common school fosters crime? Go into the prisons 
in this and other states, and ask the prisoners "what is your faith? In what 
faith were you reared?" And it is a low and conservative estimate that 75 per 
cent, will sa}-, "in the Rouuui Catholic faith I" and that a majority of that 75 
per cent, were once in the ])arish schools, (io to the drinking saloons in the 
cluster of cities around the Ijay and ask the rumsellers their religious faith or 
training, and 75 per cent will say "Roman Catholic." It is not pleasant tome 
to make these comparisons. Please remember that I was not the first to make 
tiiem I 

But about the public men. AVell, our common schools have produced such 

men as Charles Sumner and A. I.,incoln and Henry Wilson and U. S. Cjrant 

and John A. Logan and Benjaman Harrison and Horace tjreeley and James 

""a. Garfield and Washington Bartlett. 1 think our public men will compare 

favorably with the output of the parochial schools. 

But since comi)arison is challenged between tlie fruits of the two systems 
of education, American free schools and sectarian parish schools, I shall be 
happy to devote another sermon to an exhaustive comparison of them, and on 
next Sunday evening (D. V.) I will continue this discussion, taking for my 
theme "Public vs. Parochial Schools." I intend to show then, among other 
mighty interesting things, how in the parochial schools, and in the public 
schools where they obtain control of school boards, the Jesuits deliberately 
nuitilate textbooks and falsify the truths of history. 

And now permit me a word in closing. I have no prejudice against our 
Roman Catholic fellow citizens; indeed, with my friend Mr. Wendte, I believe 
that the rank and file are loyal to our institutions. It is the hierarchy that is 
plotting against our schools, and over the hierarchy the Catholic laity have no 
control. If the Roman Catholic Church, through her priesthood, were less 
inclined to meddle with matters of public policy outside of her sphere, we as 
Americans would have no special cause of suspicion or hostility toward her. 
Toward the members of that communion who are imitating the life and spirit 
of Christ I have only the most fraternal and kindly feelings. Should occasion 
require we would defend the religious liberty of our Catholic fellow citizens, 



20 Rome's Assaui^t on Our Public Schools. 

as we would our own, to the death. We are not the foes of Roman Catholics 
we wish them well; we would not Iiarm a hair of their heads; we believe that 
we are working for their highest intei'ests, and their children's, as well as our 
own, when we resist all aggression upon the common schools. But we say to 
these priests who are at 'the bottom of all this agitation and trouble: "We 
are tired of packed school boards, and falsified histories, and intimidated 
teachers, and scholars whipped by Irish priests for daring to attend a public 
school, and of hearing the public schools abused and slandered in the foulest 
language as hotbeds of immorality, as though they were reeking stews of vice 
and our gentle and refined teachers procuresses of hell. We are tired 
of it, and while you boast that the institution shall go down, though it be 
at the point of the bayonet, we say to you that it may go down, but some of us 
and a great many of you will die first!" 

lir the meanwhile we will pray for and reason with our friends, if haply 
they may come to a better mind. If not, they will find out that there are 
some things we hold dearer even than domestic peace and tranquillity, viz: the 
institutions which our fathers left us, which are as sacred to us as the 
prayers we learned at our mother's knees, and which we will defend, if need 
be, to our heart's last drop of blood. 



''^ Train up a child in the iraij he should no: and when he i.s old he trill not depart 
from ity Prov. 22:6. 



PUBLIC YS. PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS. 

SERMON BY REY. E. R. DILLE, D. D. 

Delivered at Oakland, Cal., Sept. i, 1889. 



My theme implies a certain antagonism l)et\veen tlie common and the paro- 
chial school. Unfortunately there is antagonism between the connnon schorJ and 
the Roman CaMiolic parochial school, because the aim of the former is to make 
good citizens, the aim of the latter to make good Catholics. The former seeks 
the full rounded development of the individuid in his relations to society and 
the State; the latter seeks the production of a drilled and obedient servant of 
the Romish hierarchy. The common school is not in any just sense of the 
word irreligious, much less anti-Christian; it is simply non-religious in the 
sense that special instruction in religion is left by it where it belongs, to the 
liome and the churcli. As Mr. Wendte says in his very able sermon on this 
question. "All our educators, of whatever shade of opinion, advocate and 
insist that etiiical principles are and should be an important part of common 
school education." And I may add that the ethics that have a rightful jdace 
in the schools are Christian ethics. In one of the scliools in San Francisco 
Herbert Spencer's Data of Ethics was introduced as a text book on morals — 
as palpable a violation of the law forbidding sectarian instruction ;>s the intro- 
duction of the Catholic or Methodist catechism, for Herbert Spencer belongs 
to that very small and very narrow sect which promulgates the creed of agnos- 
ticism. A certain college president prepared a text book on Political 
Economy for use in the High schools. The work was submitted to a State 
educational conunittee for examination, and the reply came back to the author: 
"The very first sentence in your book is: 'The source of all wealth is the beni- 
ficence ot God' — and this forbids ns to use it in the public schools of this State, 
for it recognizes the divine existence." That i-onnnittee were turning the 
schools over to a still smaller sect — the atheists. My friends, we do not want 
the schools either Romanized or Paganized; we believe it is in liarmony with 
the genius of our institutions that the scliools should teach a religiously 
grounded morality. Tiie French atheistic system which excludes eveiy text 
book which mentions (iod and puts the world's noblest literatuie on its index 
expurgatorius, is the antipodes of the American system as truly as is the 
Romish. 

Morality — the princiidesof right conluct in the various relations of life and 
the nniversality inul imperativeness of moral obligation, tliat broad moral 
basis on which society and commerce and government must rest, or fall in hid- 
eous ruin, belongs to the sphere of the teaching wiiich is the pro[)er function of 
the public school. 

As Americans we do not propose to go either to Paris or to Rome for our 
educational methods. Onr public schools are not in all respects adjusted to 
their environments as yet, but they can be. The just relation of church, family 
state and individual will be ascertained and adjusted, and while our schools I t^ m 
will not be sectarian they will not be godless. hir"^ 

While the public scliools then, though not irreligious, are unsectarian, the 
parochial schools arc only sectarian, since they make the dogmas and practices 
of the Roman Church pre-eminent in their tea(;liing. In proof of this I quote 
from the Catholic World of April 18, 1871: "We do not indeed prize so highly 
as some of our countrymen appear to do, the simple ability to read, write and 



^mA- 



22 Rome's Assault on Our Pubi^ic Schools. 

cipher. * * * Some are born to be leaders, and the rest are born to be led, 
-:«■ -;f * The best ordered and administered State is that in which the few 
are well educated and lead, and the many are trained to obedience, are willing 
to be directed — content to follow, and do not aspire to be leaders. * * * In 
extending education and endeavoring to train all to be leaders, we have only 
extended presumptions, pretentions, conceit, indocility and brought incapacity 
to the surface. '•'" * * 

"For the great mass of the people, the education needed is not secular edu- 
cation, which simply sharpens the intellect and generates pride and jaresump- 
tion, but moral and religious education * ''- * which teaches them to be 
modest, docile and respectful to their superiors." 

— - — CarcTinal Antonelli accurately expressed the spirit that dominates the 
parochial school, when he said that he "thought it better that children 
should grow up in ignorance than be educated in sucli a system of schools as 
the State of Massachusetts supports; tJuit the essential part of education was 
the catechism; and while arithmetic and geography and other similar studies 
might be useful, they were not essential." 

The late Archbishop Spaulding of Baltimore explicity ^tated that the 
public school system of America was good for a republican government, but 
was bad for the Roman Catholic Church, because its tendency was culture in 
independence of thought and loyalty to the Republic first, and, necessarily, 
subservience of thought and loyalty to the Roman Church second. 

Tlie true purpose of the Romish hierarchy in establishing parochial 
schools was ver}' plainly disclosed in an article which appeared some time ago 
in the Tablet of New York. The article was headed " How the Church Saves 
Society." The article states, with great plainness, a determination to "train 
up a nation of Roman subjects, within the nation of American citizens." 

It is said that the poison of the cobra serpent becomes innocuous when ex- 
posed to the sun. So Romanism, whose virus has got into the blood of so 
many jjeoples, fears the light|as it fears nothing else. Fellow citizens, we have 
in our midst a band of priestly conspirators, who have no symi^athy for 
American' Government or its system of education. They have been watch- 
ing with sleepless vigilance every phase of our school system, and they have 
seen that our free schools are the nurseries of American ideas, and that a 
large number of children born of Roman Catholic parents, who were edu- 
cated in these schools were so tlioroughly Americanized in them that they 
were lost to the Church, and so at tlie command of the Pope they have gone to 
work to take possession of our schools — to control them or to destroy them. 
The,y are perfectly willing to control them, and though Father Gleeson calls 
the system Diana of the Ephesians, his co-religionists are quite willing to be 
priests and priestesses and temple sweepers for this Diana! 

The priests of Rome would carry the abomination of desolation into the 
holy place of our public schools if they could. A lady of this city informs 
me that a priest conducted^Romish services in the school in the Laguna dis- 
trict in San Mateo county — a public schools in which the teacher and most of 
the scholars were Catholics. 

I agree with Father Gleeson ( I am glad we are agreed on something) that 
the school question is a matter of life and death to liis church; so much the 
worse for his church, say we. If the issue is between the two, if one or the 
other must go, the American people will not hesitate a moment. They will 
send every meddling priest liorae to Rome before they will see the system 
harmed. By the way, come to think of it, if these befrocked gentlemen 
don't like our institutions, why don't they leave our country for one where 
there are no "grim insatiable Molochs" in the shape of free schools to af- 
fright their souls? I'll agree to take up a rousing collection to pay their pas- 
sage home, right here in Oakland! 

Rome knows tluit it can only control the people by beginning at the be- 
ginning, before they are able to judge intelligently for themselves. That is 
why it has always put itself in opposition to popular education. It dreads 
the influence of our free schools upon its children, and is determined to over- 
throw them if possible. Now that Europe has become weary of her, and 



Rome's x\ssaui.t on Our Public Schools. 23 

the countries slie has so long blighted are throwing off the incubus of priest- 
craft, she looks to America and tliinks to take advantage of our liberal laws 
and our Protestant tolerance to set up here her throne of power; but to do 
that she nuist first destroy our common school system. 

Our American schools are doomed because they foster liberty. 

Bishop 0'( 'oinior, of Pittsburg, says: " Religious liberty is merely endured 
till the opposite can be carried into eflect without peril lo the Catholic world." 

The Archl)ishop of St. Louis says: " If tlie Catholics ever gain, which 
they surely w'll, an innnense numerical mnjority, religious freedom in this 
country will be at an end." • 

Here is a distinct announcement of the official authorities and the highest 
representative men of the Konuin Catholic Church, of their purjiose to tear 
down this great system of education. And for the reason, tiiey say, it is in the 
way of the progress of the Catholic Church in America; that there can be no 
success in planting the Church in this Union wliile tiie free school system re- 
mains intact. "The fact is, Komanism and liberty cannot live on good terms. 
Where Komanism thrives, there liberty dies; and where liberty thrives, Ko- 
manism dies." 

Dr. (). A. Erownson, in his Catholic Revieir of June, 18o7, affimns that 
"Protestantism of every form has not, and never can have any ri(/ht where 
Catholicity /.s trinmphanL" Very significant are the words of Pius the IX in 
iiis allocution to a Consistory of Cardinals, September, 1851. " We have 
taken this principle for basis: that the Catholic religion, with all its rights, 
ought to be exclusively dominant, in such sort that every other worship shall 
l)e banisiied and interdicted;" and while lamenting the progress of liberty, he 
adds, "It is a cause of supreme bitterness to the heart of tiie Holy Father not 
to be able otherwise to impose a limit to so much evil, as he certainly would if 
he could make use of other means to bridle their insane license." 

James Anthony Fronde, under the heading "What a Catholic Ma'ioiity 
Could Do in America," shows clearly tiie political and educational tendencies 
of Konian Catholicism when in the ascendency: 

" We agree that the sjjiritual part of man ought to rule the material; the 
(piestion is, where the s})iritual part of man resides. The Protestant answers 
that it is in the individual conscience and reason; the Catholic says that it 
is in the Cluirch aiui that it speaks througli l)isho]is and jiriesls. Thus every 
true Catliolic is bound to think and act as his priest tells him, and a Kepublic 
of true Catholics becomes a theocracy administered by the clergy. It is only 
as long as as they are a small minority that they can be loyal subjects under 
such a Constitutif.n as the American. As their numbers grow, they will assert 
their principles more and more. Give them the power and the Constitution 
will be gone. A Catliolic majority, under spiritual direction, will forbid lib- 
erty of conscience, and will try to forbid liberty of worship. It will control 
education, it will put the press under surveillance, i<^ will punish opposition 
with excommunication, and excommunication will be attended with civil dis- 
abilities." 

Father Hecker says: "The day will come when Romanists will take this 
country and build tlieir institutions over the grave of Protestantism and then 
religious liberty is at an end." 

The immortal La Fayette (himself a Catholic) said: " If ever the liberty 
of the American Republic is destroye<l, it will l)e the work of Roman Catholic 
priests." 

Now, while we question no man's riglit to hold the creed and practice the 
religious ceremonies which his judgment and choice c(uinnend to him, so long 
as the practice of his religion involves no infringement on others' riglits, still 
an institution which claims for itself the right to control the primary educa- 
tion of citizens, is a proper subject of criticism and investigation. 

To-day we have nearly a million of the future citizens and voters of this 
country in parochial schools, and all the power that Rome can bring to bear 
through, the pulpit and the confessional is being used to force all the chihlren of 
Catholics into them. It is a fact full of promise to our nation tiiat there is 
a strong tendency on the part of more enlightened Romanists to revolt from 



24 Rome's Assault on Our Public Schooi,s. 

the dictation of a lot of celibate priests in their most sacred domestic mat- 
ters, and in spite of the thmiders of the Vatican, the denials of the sacra- 
ments and the use of all the spiritual penalties whicii Eome has at her com- 
mand, two-tliirds of the children of Catholic families are still in our public 
schools, where the}' can obtain secular education without anv of the musty 
flavor of monkery and mediffivalism about it. Father Gleeson himself 
was told (so we are credibly informed) by one of his flock whom he com- 
manded to take her children out of the public schools, to go to a warmer 
climate than Oakland, and a gentleman requested him with more force than 
politeness to mind his own business, when he invaded his home on a similar er- 
rand. Imagine any Protestant minister in this city interfering in that way 
with the domestic aflairs of his people! And yet the reverend father sets him- 
self up as the champion of parental rights! 

The first question that demands solution in this discussion is: Has the 
State a right to educate? This the advocate of parochial schools emphati- 
cally deny, except under such limitations as practically reduce the function of 
the State to the task of providing the school funds, over the expenditure of 
which, however, it may have no control. 

Father Conaty, of Worcester, Mass., at the opening of a new parochial 
school in Jamaica Plain last July, said: " The State as educator of its citizens, 
is a relic of barbarism." 

Tiie TiMet, aKoman Catholic journal, declares: "We hold education to be 
a function of tlie Church, not of the State; and in our case we do not and will 
not accept the State as educator." 

A Papal encyclical says: "XLV. The Eomish Church has a right to 
interfere in the discipline of tlie public schools, and in the arrangement of 
the studies and in the choice of the teachers for these schools. 

" XLVII. Public schools open to all children for the education of the 
young should be under the control of the Romish Church, and should not be 
subject to the civil power nor made to conform to the opinions of the age." 

Similarly The Catholic World says, " The Church asserts and defends these 
principles, and she flatly contradicts the assumption on the part of the State 
of the prerogative of education and determinedly opposes the effort to bring 
up the youth of the country for purely secular and temporal purposes. * '" 
* While the State has rights, she has them only in virtue and by permis- 
sion of the superior authority, and that authority c n only be expressed 
through the Church." Vol. 2, p. 439. 

Dr. Brownson in his review said: " The attention of the Catholic world 
has been directed to this subject by those whom God has sent to rule over us, 
and a struggle which will end in a victory for tlie Cluuxh, has begun between 
Catholicity and the State, to see who shall have the child." 

Better languisli and die under the red flag of England, than to live to beget 
children of perdition under the flag of a proselvting republic." [Catholic Celt 
of Bufliilo.) 

And Father Gleeson says: " . . here we have foi-ced on us by the will of 
the majority, a system of instruction which we are ready to show lias been and is 
robbing our little ones by tJie thousand and by the million of what is dearer to 
them than their very existence — the faith of their fathers'. Wlio gave the State 
the absolute dominion over the finances of the whole country for such an ig- 
noble pm-pose as this? Was it the object for wliich the public school system 
of this country was established, to destroy the faith of the Catholic people?" 

Now this proposition: That the State has a right to educate, which we af- 
firm and Romanists deny, is a vital one in this connection. The public 
schools stand or fall with the right of the State to educate. Father King, 
for whom 1 have sincere respect, says that we Protestants have no occasion to 
champion the Government as against the Churcli, as the Government is abun- 
dantly able to take care of itself. 

May I venture to remind the venerable Father that in a republic the people 
are the Government — the State? Politically, the State with us is the whole 
people exercising tlie functions of self conservation, and self government. 
Tlie State is the organic i)eople, and as such has certain rights and duties — 



Rome's Assault on Our Public vSchools. 25 

for these are always correlatives. And the ground of tlie common school is 
the right and duty of the State to educate the whole people to such an ex- 
tent and in such fashion as will secure the preservation of the State and the 
development of its life. 

Daniel Wehster, the great expounder of the Constitution, said: " The 
power of education is one of the powers of public police belonging essentially 
to the government. It is one of the powers, the exercise of which is indis- 
pensable to the ])reservation of society with integrity and healthy action; it 
is the duty of self protection." 

1. The State must educate because its political safety depends upon it. 
The conversative and guiding forces of a republic do not reside in a power 
outside of and above the people — they reside in the people — in the minds and 
wills of the many who by their opinions and votes determine the policy of 
the Government and the character of its rulers. Ignorance is a perpetual in 
viiation to anarchy with its torch on the one hand and the man on horseback 
on the other. In this countrv it is the ignorance of many voters that makes 
the opportunity of the bosses and the demagogues. 

2. The State must educate because commercial and industrial prosperity 
and material progress of everv kind depend on general intelligence. In 1870, 
the Connnissioner of Education at Washington instituted a long and search- 
ing investigation of the whole industrial field to determine the relative pro- 
ductiveness of literate and illiterate labor. The investigation developed the 
following facts: 

1. " That an average free, common school education, .such as is provided 
in all the States where the free coiimion school has become a permanent insti- 
tution, adds fifty per cent, to the productive power of the laborer, con.sidered 
as a mere productive machine. 

i That the average Academical education adds 100 per cent. 

3. That the average Collegiate or I'niversity education adds from 200 to 
^00 per cent, to the worker's average annual productive capacity — to say noth- 
ing of the vast increase of his manliness." 

4. The State nnist educate, because the well-being of the nation depends 
upon its morality, and tiiat is in direct ratio to the general difi'usion of intel- 
ligence, as tlic statistics of the relatitm of crime to illiteracy clearly demon- 
strate. 

In France, in 1808, one-half of the inhabitants could neither read nor 
write. P'rom this half came ninety-five per cent, of the i>ersons arrested for 
crime. From the other half came only five per cent. In a word, a given 
number of children suflered to grow up in ignorance produced nineteen times 
as many criminals as the same number produced who were etlucated at least 
to the extent of the elementary branches. 

In the six New England States, in 1870, only seven per cent, of the inhabi- 
tants above ten years of age \fere unal)le to read and write; yet this seven per 
cent, produced eiglity per cent, of the criminals. That is, the proportion of 
criminal illiterates to criminal literates was fifty-three to one. This fact 
sufficiently vindicates the moral effect of the New England system of public 
education against Cardinal Manning's charge in the Forum, which Father 
<jrlee.son quotes. 

5. The State must educate because many parents have not the means nor 
the motives for tiie education of their cliildren. Tlie i)arentMl right of con- 
trol over children is not absolute. It has certain limitations in the natural 
rights of chihlren. The equity of laws compelling the attendance of children 
at school during certain years of their life is based not oidy on the right of 
the State to protect itself, "but upon its right and duty to protect its defence- 
less wards, the children of parents too ignorant or vicious to educate them. 

6. The State nnist educate in order to bring about that social homogeneity 
which is vital to a republic. Aristocracy intrenches and jierpetuates itself in 
private schools. But in the common school the children of ricii and poor 
meet on a coumion level, and all througii the school course a sort of leveling 
process goes on — a leveling up and not down, for the tendency is to lift the 
whole sciiool to the level of the best and most refined elements in it. The 



26 Rome's Assaui^t on Our Public SchooIvS. 

common school is the natural foe of caste and of foreignism. and the process- 
of assimilation which goes on there is of tremendous importance in 
this country, where we have annually from rive to eight hundred 
thousand immigrants coming to us from foreign lands. Imagine the eflect, if 
the children ot" our foreign population should be segregated into schools 
where foreign ideas should be sedulously taught, and should grow up in as 
dense ignorance of our institutions as their fathers are when they land at 
Castle Garden — how long would this nation stand the strain? I tell you it is 
a glorious thing for broadcloth and homespun, the children of Hans and Pat 
and Jonny Crapaud and John Bull and Brother Jonathan to rub up against 
each other in the public schools. There our lads learn to clasp hands in a 
mutual respect born of something broader and better than class or race or 
creed distinctions — distinctions about which the wholesome public school boy, 
thank God, cares precious little. It is the function then of the common school: 

1. To furnish a wholesome and thorough primary nsental training for 
every child in the land. 

2. To make good citizens by inculcating those principles of morality, pat- 
riotism and true social life, without which a republic, however rich its re- 
sources, and however favorable its natural situation, cannot long endure and 
prosper. 

Such is the ground and theory of the common school. The parochial 
school, on the other hand, is based on the assumption that the Roman Catho- 
lic Church is the infallible representative of God on earth; that as Cardinal 
Manning says, the Pope alone has the right to derine the limits of his own 
authority and the limits of the authority of the State; that it is the Pope's 
duty to pronounce not only on the rights of individuals, but of people, n:;- 
tions and their rulers. 

Father McNally indignantly denies that Catholics would throw their 
country aside and be recreant to their principles of patriotism if Kome should 
call on them to do so, and adds: " Wow could the Pope influence us if he 
would?" ■ Over against that utterance of Father McNally I put the words of 
Bishop Giluiour: "Nationalities must be subordinate to religion. We must 
learn that we are Catholics first, citizens next. Catholicism teaches that the 
Church is above the State." 

Cardinal Newman said to Mr. Gladstone: " No pledge (of civil allegiance) 
is of any value fiom Cathplics to which Kome is not a party," thus fully jus- 
tifying the charge of the Grand Old Man whom Father Gleesou quotes with 
such unction that consistent "Catholics hold their loyalty and civil duty at the 
mercy of another." 

On page 278 of a book prepared for tiie use of the Roman colleges and schools 
by the Rev. F. X. Schouppe of tlie Society of Jesuits, and bearing the impri- 
matur of Cardinal Manning, we are told that, " Tlie civil laws are binding on 
the conscience only so long as they are conformable to the rights of the Cath- 
olic Church," and on page 279 that human laws are susceptible of dispensa- 
tion. The power to dispense belongs to the sovereign Pontift'." This is plain 
language. It cannot be misunderstood. Civil laws are not binding when 
they CO itlict with the decrees of the Pope. 

The second assumption which lies at the basis of parochial schools is that 
the Roman Catholic Church is the supreme authority in all education; that 
the end of education is to make obedient and capable servants of the Church; 
and that therefore the Church must have supreme control of the means and 
methods of education. 

The Catholic Review for April, 1871, said: " We deny, of course as Roman 
Catholics, the rights of the civil government to educate; for education is a 
function of the spiritual society as much as preaching." 

A Catholic Dictionary, edited by William E. Addis and Thomas Arnold, 
bearing the imprimatur of Henry E. Manning, Cardinal Archbishop of 
Westminster, declares that: " The tirst and highest authority in all that re- 
gards education is the Church. With her sanction it should be commenced, 
and under her superintendence it should be continued." 



Rome's Assault on Our Public Schools. 27 

I come now to tlie pnieticivl results wliicli tlie spirit and method of tlie 
parochial school invariably produce. 

The assault u^jon free popular education which is made here, is successful 
in all Catholic countries. In Quebec the Jesuits have captured the funds 
which have been raised by taxation for high schools, and as Mr. Pixley well 
says: "We Americans now enjoy the unusual privilege of seeing the garroter 
who has determined to strangle us to-morrow perform the operation of choking 
the victim lie lias selected for to-day." If we are wise, forewarned will 1 e 
forearmed, and the iiugers that now clutch the Canadian throat will be hand- 
cuffed before they embrace our jugular vein. 

1. What has been the practical result of Eomish schools in the Old 
World? IJsten to Count Cavoiu-, the Italian statesman, the prime minister of 
I'nited Italy. He says: "Nothing hurts Rome so nuich as the light; I will 
attack Rome by railways, by electric telegraphs, by agricultural implements, 
by gratuitous education on a large scale, by civil marriages, by the seculariza- 
tion of conventual property, by the enactment of a modei code, eml)odying the 
most lenient laws of Europe, and by the suppression of corporeal punishment. 
I will place the spirit of modern expansion face to face with the old spirit of 
obscurantism. I am quite certain the former will triumph. I will establish a 
blockade of new civilization aroinid Rome. If she undergoes a modification, 
she will come to us; if she remains unchanged, she will by constant comparison 
become so dissrusted with her state of inferiority that she will throw hersel f 
into our arms to escape destruction." 

What the prime minister predicted has come to pass; for free Italy has 
become too hot to hold his Holiness, the Pope, and he is talking of emigrating 
to some land still in the twilight of medisevalism, like >Spaiu or Portugal. 

Victor Hugo, the greatest genius of this century, saw what Romish schools 
meant in France, and he says of them: 

"Ah, we know you! We know the clerical party; it is an old party. This 
it is which has found for ti'Uth tlujse two marvelous supports, ignorance and 
error. This it is which forbids to science and genius the going' beyond the 
missal, and which wishes to cloister thought in dogmas. Every step which the 
intelligence of Europe has taken has 'oeen in s]iite of it. Its history is written 
in the history of human progress, but it is written on the back of the leaf. It 
is opposed to it all. - ^•' * 

"For a long time the human conscience has revolted against you and now 
demands of you, 'What is it that yon wish of me?' For a long time you have 
tried to put a gag upon the human intellect. You wish to be the masters of 
human education, and there is not a poet, nor an author, nor a thinker, nor a 
j)hilosopher that you accept. All that has been written, found, dreamed, de- 
duced, inspired, imagined, inve-nted by thegenius, the treasures of civilization, the 
venerable inheritance of generations, the connnon means of knowledge, you re- 
ject. You claim the liberty of teaching. Stop! be sincere. Let us understand the 
liberty you claim. It is the liiierty not to teach." 

Who is this Rome, fellow citizens, that comes to us with this arrogant 
claim that Ciod has connnitted to her the exclusive function of educating the 
youth of this land? 

Who is this that claims that our school system is godless and impious, un- 
fit for the education of her children? AViio is this that would rend asunder 
our school system, the palladium of tlie American Republie? What has been 
her record in the work of education? What su])erior eidigbtenment has she 
imparted to the nations that iiave long been under her dominion? What type 
of civilization lias she fostered? What progress in morality, piety, the arts 
and sciences, and in social amenities? 

Gattiani, a member of the Italian Parliament, speaking of what the Papal 
church has done in the line of progress and in the line of civilization asks: 

"What share has the Papacy taken in this work — is it the press? Is it 
electricity? Is it steam? Is it chemical analysis? Is it self-government? Is 
it the |)riuciple of nationality? Is it tlie ](roclamation of the rights of man? 
Of the liberty of conscience? Of all this tiie Papacy is the negation. Its cul- 
minating points are (rregory I, who, Uke Omar, burnt libraries; Gregory VII 



:28 Rome's Assault on Our Pubwc Schools. 

who destroyed a moiety of Rome and created the temporal sovereignty; Inno- 
cent the III, who founded the Inquisition; Boniface IX, who destroyed the 
last remains of municipal liberty in Rome; Pius VII, who committed the same 
wrong in Bologna; Alexander VI, who established the censorship of books; Paul 
III, who published tlie bull for the established of the Jesuits; Pius V, who 
•covered Europe with burning funeral jay res; Urban VIII, who tortured Gali- 
leo; and Pius IX, who has given us tlie modern syllabus. 

This is tlie power that is striving to undermine, destroy, or control the 
■educational interests of our land. It put Campanella seven times to the tor- 
ture for saying that the number of worlds was infinite. It persecuted Har- 
vey for proving the circulation of the blood. In the name of Jesus, it shut 
np Galileo for having said that Jupiter had moons. It imprisoned Christopher 
Columbus. To find a new world was heresy; to discover a new law of the 
heavens was imisiety. It was this spirit that anathemmatized Pascal in the 
name of religion; Montaigne in the name of morality, and Moliei'e in the 
name of both morality and religion." 

I do not deny that the Church of Rome has done good educational work in 
all the ages, for which the world is greatly her debtor, but it was the education 
of limited classes — never of the people. Her education was for the cloister and 
the castle, and not for the yoeinanry and peasantry of Europe. It lias ever 
been her policy to keep the masses ignorant, in harmony with her time honored 
maxim that "ignorance is the mother of devotion." 

In the Papal States before the downfall of the Pope's temporal power, 
although the Romish Church had absolute control of all atiairs both temporal 
and spiritual, 80 per cent, of the people could neither read nor write, and only 
5 per cent, could read and write, and an American official stationed there said 
that the humblest district school in the backwoods of America was iniinitely 
superior to the parochial schools of Rome. The leading institutions of the 
Eternal City were churches, monasteries, and foundling asylums — the latter 
by no means least important in a land where the proportion of illegitimate 
births was larger than in any other country m Chistendom. 

A gentleman of my acquaintance made the statement to me that while 
visiting Ireland he was gratified to see the country dotted all over with the 
Board school-houses, the national schools built by the British government, to 
try to lift the Irisli race from the slough of ignorance, idleness, and bigotry, 
into which centuries of priestly instruction had brought them. But while 
driving across the country he saw a Catholic priest standing with a whip in 
his hand to scourge back the Irish gossoons who might have the tem- 
erity to approach the National schoolhouse. That was in Ireland; but we 
have a companion to tbe picture. 

In New England, in Cambn'dgeport, Mass., not a great while ago, a few Cath- 
olic parents refused to send their children to Father Scully's parochial school. 
Against these parents Father Scully directed all the ecclesiastical weapons at 
his command. He refused them the sacraments, denied them absolution, and 
commanded his flock to shun them o.s if they were Protestants. ( )ne boy who went 
to the public school was placed by Father Scully upon a table and his back 
lashed till for two weeks he could not lie down on account of the wounds. 
Archbishop Williams was appealed to and sustained Father Scully in his heroic 
measures for the suppression of the public school heresy in his ]iarisli. Under 
the parochial schools of the Romish Church the people of Catholic Ireland 
and Italy have fallen so far behind other races in intelligence that they have 
become mere hewers of wood and drawers of water for the nations that sustain 
a system of free public education abreast of the age. Look at Spain, where 
Rome has controlled all education for ages. Sevent}^ per cent, of the population 
could neither read nor write in 1864, though Spain had fifty-eight colleges, 
with 14,000 students in them — nearly all priests and monks being trained to 
prey upon the ignorance and superstition of the people. Iir Spain to-day, with 
16,000,000 people, 12,000,000 can neither read nor write. Victor Hugo said 
to Rome: "What have you done for Spain? Spain, magnificently endowed 
Spain, which received from the Romans her first, and from the Arabs her 
second civilization; from Providence, in spite of you, aworld — America — Spain, 



Rome's Assault on Our Public Schools. 29. 

thanks to you, rests under a yoke of stupor, degradation, and decay. Spain 
has lost tlie secret of the jjovver it obtained from the Eonians, the genius of art 
it obtained from the Arabs, the new world it had from God; and it has 
received from you, in exchange for all you have made it lose, the Inquisition, 
which some of you are trying to reestablish; which has burned on the funeral 
pyre millions of men, whicli disinterred the dead to burn tliem as heretics. 
That is what you have done for two great nations, and tiiat is what you want 
to do for P^ ranee. Take care: France is a lion and is alive." After this 
mastei'piece of sarcasm from the illustrious Hugo, look over Mexico, Central 
and fSouth America, after nearly four centuries of Catholic education. Who. 
dares deny that Koman Catholic countries in both hemispheres are the least 
educated? that in them is the deepest, densest ignorance and the grossest morals- 
and tiie most unpardonable loitering in the march of human progress that is 
to be found in Christendom? while ( Jermany, Switzerland, Norway, England, 
and til e Inited States are the best instructed countries in the world, because 
they each iiave a national system of instruction. 

The great Knglisli historian, Macaulay, in speaking of the manifest supe- 
I'iority of Protestantism over Komanism in his day, said: "When in Ireland,, 
you pa.ss from a Catholic to a Protestant country, in Switzerland, from a Catli- 
olic to a Protestant Canton, or in Germany from a Catholic to a Protestant 
State, you feel you are passing from a low to a high civilization." 

The Koman Church has had charge of JNIexico for 300 years, and what i& 
Mexico to-day? Rev. Dr. Green, visiting at Pachuca, writing to Rev. Dr. J. 
M. King, of New York, says: "Potatoes sell for a penny apiece, and you buy 
them one at a time, for the seller cannot count." Think of it, Fatlier Gleeson; 
in 300 y^ars your jjarochial schools in ^lexico have not tauglit the i^eople to- 
count two potatoes! In Ireland they have taught the people to count potatoes, 
and not much else, except the catechism. In the same letter Dr. Green says; 
"Yesterday was Sunday, and the Lord Archbishoii attended the bull-fight after 
mass in his clerical robes, and applauded the fun, and graciously remarked 
that it was one of the most skillful he had ever seen." The good Archbishop 
doesn't have his Sunday dolce fur niente interfered with, as does Father Gleeson, 
by liaving to warn his flock against free schools! In Mexico and the South 
American States the Roman hierarchy has controlled education for ages, and 
the result is pauperism, ignorance, disorder and lawlessness. Are you ready, 
fellow citizens, to turn your iambs over to the tender mercies of these wolves in 
sheep's clothing? 

Look again at South America. It lias a decided advantage over our land 
in climate, soil, and mineral resources. But Romaiysm has rested like a pall 
upon that fair land. Thank (Tod, that dark pall is being lifted, and Brazil, 
Chili, Peru, and the Argentine Repul)lic are revolting from the rule of Rome, 
expelling the accursed Jesuits, and awakening to a nobler national life. 

But to bring this question nearer home to everyone who hears me, I pro- 
pose to show what is taught in the parochial sciiools of this as well as of other 
lands. The Romanists demand a share of the school funds, to be applied to 
the support of parochial schools. I want you to know what they are asking you 
to pay for, that if you accede to their demands, you may do so with your eyes open. 

A Prussian proverb affirms that what is to appear in th.e life of a nation 
must first be put into its elementary schools. I want to show what is being 
drilled into nearly a million children in this country, half of whom are des- 
tined to be our future voters and office holders, and the other half to wield still 
more influence as wives and mothers. 

The i)olitical power of Romanism depends upon the unity of the Catholic 
population at the polls, and that depends upon the sviccess of the parochial 
schools. 

Take first the catechism, which is placed first in tlie curriculum of parocli^ 
ial schools. The catechism which I (luote from is authorized by the Third 
Plenary Council at Baltimore. 

After teaching the infalibility of the Pope and the doctrine that the sacra- 
mental bread and wine are changed by the celebrant of the mass into the ver- 
itable body and blood of Christ, it goes on to teach the children of our Cath- 



30 Rome's Assault on Our Public Schools. 

olic neighbors tliat our Protestant marriages are not valid, althongli it does 
not call them as did Archbishop Alemany, "a filthy concubinage." 

I quote. "What is the sacrament of matrimony'/ 

Answer. The sacrament of matrimony is the sacrament which unites a 
Christian man and woman in lawful marriage. 

Question. Can a Christian man and woman be united in lawful marriage 
in any other way than by the sacrament of matrimony? Ans. "They cannot, 
because Christ raised matrimony to the dignity of a sacrament. 

It is in hai'mony with this delectable teaching that you are asked to pay for, 
that Archbishop Riordan publishes a circular and sends it to his tlock every 
year, telling them that all who have been married by Protestant ministers or 
magistrates are living in adultery. 

"Q. Again: If the Catholic C'hurch is to lead all men to eternal salvation 
and has for that purpose, received from Christ her doctrine, her means of grace 
and her powers, what, for his jsart, is every one obliged to do? 

"A. Every one is obliged, under pain of eternal damnation, to become a 
member of the Catholic Church, to believe her doctrine, to use her means of 
grace, and to submit to her authority." 

I c[Uote another book prepared by Jesuits for the tender minds of your 
neighbor's children. It is printed in Baltimore under the license of the late 
Archbishop Bailey: 

"Q. Have Protestants any faith in Christ? 

"A. They never had. 

"Q. Why not? 

"A. Because there never lived such a Christ as they imagine and believe in. 

"Q. In what kind of a Christ do thev believe? 

"A. In such a one of whom they can make a liar with impunity, whose 
doctrine they can interpret as they please, and who does not care what a man 
believes, provided he be an honest man before the public. 

"Q,. Will such a faith in such a Christ save Protestants? 

"A. No sensible man will assert such an absurdity. 

'. . . . " .' . ' ' 

"Q. Xva Protestants willing to confess their sins to a Catholic bishop or 

priest who alone has power from Christ to forgive sins ? 

"A. No; for thev generally have an utter aversion to confession, and, there- 
fore, their sins will not be forgiven them throughout all eternitv. 

"Q. What follows from this? 

"A^ That thev die in their sins, and are damned." 



In Father Crury's "Comj^endium of Moral Theology." — and this famous book 
is in use in Jesuit colleges throughout the world — it is taught that he wdio has 
sworn to marry a young woman rich and healthy, is not bound by his oath 
should she happen to become poor, or fall into bad health; that servants or per- 
son employed on salaries, who are of the opinion that their wages are inferior 
for the work done by them, may make use of clandestine compensation, which is 
defined as consisting in the recovery of what is due by invasion of another 
person's jiroperty. Here are all the references, and if anybody wishes to come 
to me and verify these quotations, this book is at his service. 

Here is what the parochial school books teach about the reformers: A book 
written by Father Baddeley, published in Boston, which Catholic children are 
obliged to commit to memory', speaking of Martin Luther, says; "What! can a 
man who was mad with lust, who lived in adultery and caused othei'sto do the 
same — who wrote most horrid blasphemy, and cori'upted the Bible, who was a 
notorious drunkard and companion of devils, who was as proud as Satan liim- 
self, a preacher of sedition and murder: what ! can this ivrefch be compared 
with Paul ?" 

A book bearing the title "Plain Talk About the Protestants of To-day," 
which is placed in the hands of young Catholics contains these statements: 
"Martin Luther died forlorn of God — blaspheming to the very end. His last 
word was an attestation of impenitence. His eldest son, who had doubts both 
about the Reformation and the Reformer, asked him for a last time whether he 
persevered in the doctrine he preached. 'Yes,' replied a gurgling sound from 



Romp:'s Assault ox Our Public Schools. 31 

the old sinner's throat — and Luther was before iiis ( iod I ( alvin died of scar- 
let fever, devoured by vermin, and eaten up ))y an ulcerated abscess, the stench 
whereof drove away every person. In great misery he gave up his rascally 
ghost, despairing ol' salvation, evoking the devils from the abyss, and uttering 
oaths most horiible and blasj)hemies most frightful." 

Of Fox's "l>ook of ^lartyrs" this s-mio treatise says: "Tiiese saints were 
nothing but a set of deluded, i-ebellious, im[)ious, and blasphemous wretches." 

("oming to history, we tind that the parochial schools use textl)ooks that 
ai'e disiionest an<l deficient in their teaching of this l)ranch of knowledge — 
deficient l)ecausc vital tacts of history or suppressed or obscured — dishonest, 
because glaring misstaiemeuts are made in the intei'cst of the ( 'atholic Church. 

Let us examine some of tiiese jiiotis frauds witli which .Jesuitism feeds the 
]aml)s of its flock. 

When Swinton's llistorv was Ijanished from the Boston l)U^)lic schools at 
the demand of the l)riests, Anderson's (ireneral History was sul)stituted, but 
not until it had been mutilated and Romanized by the change and substitution 
of whole i)ages. All that referred to the persecution of the Lollards and 
Albigenses, to the contest between Pope Boniface N'llI and Philiii IV of 
France, which i-esulted ni the Po]H''s retiiemcnt to Avignon foi- seventy years 
is omitted and the massacre of St. Partholnmew ])artially justified, the Hugue- 
nots being declared to be the aggressors, and the number massacred is given at 
10,000 instead of 100,000. 

J?ut the liistory used in the parochial schools of this city takes the palm for 
whitewashing that infamous and hellish massacre. I have it in my hand — ■ 
"('omi)endium of History, by John O'Kane Kerney." 

Bismarck said th;it tlie saddest sight he saw in France during the invasion 
of it by the (ierman armies was not battle fields covered with dead and dying, 
l>ut mutilated misleading text books in children's desks in Catholic schools. 
Such school books are now scattered over the continent by udllions. Listen to 
the mendacity of this instructor of youth. I want yon to hear it, boys and 
girls of (»ur Higii and (irammar schools, parents and teachers. 

It gives the number who fell on that day at 78(). It says that Pojie Greg- 
oi-y XlII, on receiving the account of the transaction — tr(tnm(:tion is good for 
the massacre of 100,000 men, women and children — ofiered up public thanks, 
not that he rejoiced in the death of the supjiosed traitors, but for the preserva- 
tion of the French Monarch and his kingdom from ruin. 

And then it caps the climax of shameless falsehood by adding the follow- 
ing foot-note by Cardinal Ciibbons: " lir/if/ion had nothing to do with the 
massacre, ('oligny and his fellow Huguenots were slain, not on account of 
their creed, but exchisirdj/ on account of their alleged treasonable designs. 
If they had nothing I)ut their Protestant faith to render them odious to King 
Charles, they would never have been molested. " 

And Bisho]) (iilmour's history says: "As to the solenni Tc J h' inn axuig at 
Rome by order of Pope Gregory XIII, it was done under tiie impression that 
the massacre was begun on the iiart of the Calvinists, that the King's party 
acted ill self defense, and that the aHair grew out of an unsuccessful conspiracy 
against the French (iovernment and Catholic Church." Religion nothing to 
do with iti Why every schoolboy here knows that it was the slaughter- 
breathing letters of the Pope that prompted that fiend in human shape, 
('harles IX, to the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The Pope commanded him 
to follow the example of the Israelites in slaying the Amalekites, and other 
heathen nations, and to "utterly extirpate the roots of so great an evil." "It 
is your duty," he said, "to be deaf to every jirayer, to reject every claim of 
consanguinity and kindred; to manifest yourself inexorable to every voice 
which may dare to petition for the most impious of men; and to that holy 
task, as it becomes our pastoral oftice and our pastoral affection, we think it 
fitting to stimulate yon by this fatherly admonition." In obedience to these 
injunctions, Charles IX, on the evening of August 23, 1572, issued orders for 
the massacre by which 100,000 of the best citizens of France were murdered 
in cold blood. And yet American children are being taught that the Church 
had nothing to do with the Idackest crime of all the ages! 




32 Rome's AssauIvT on Our Pubi^ic Schools. 

Such lies are like the fathers of them, gross as a mountain, open, palpable. 
Like the system thej^ are forged lo maintain, they are begotten in sin and 
conceived in iniquity. 

The sanie veracious chronicle tells us that the Eomish priest and prelates 
had nothing to do witli the death of those who sutfei-ed by the Inquisition; 
that all the priestly council ever did was to declare men gtiilty and turn 
them over to the civil authorities; that all the arms the priesthood used ta 
extirpate heresy were prayer, patience and instruction! 

As an insiructive comment on that, I quote the following translation from 
a recent number of the Catholic Banner, the organ of the Papal Church at 
Barcelona, Spain: " Thank God, we at last have turned toward the times when 
those who propagated heretical doctrines were punished with exemplary pun- 
ishment. The re-establishment of the Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition 
must soon take place. Its reign will be more glorious and. fruitful in results 
than in the past. Our Catholic lieart overflows with faith and enthusiasm, 
and the immense joy which we experience as we begin to reap the fruit of our 
present campaign exceeds all imagination. What a day of pleasure will that 
be for us when we see anti-clericals writhing in the flames of the Inquisition!" 
To arouse and encourage them to begin another crusade the same paper says: 
"We believe it right to publish the names of those holy men under whose 
hands so many sinners suffered, that good Catholics may venerate their mem- 
ory. 

By Torquemada — 
Men and women burnt alive 10,220 

By Diego Deza — 
Men and women burnt alive 2,592 

By Cardinal Jiminez de Cisneros — 
Men and women burnt alive 3,564 

By Adrian de Florencia — 
Men an( I women burnt alive 1,620 

Total number of men and women burnt alive under the ministry of 
forty-five holy Inquisitor Generals 35,364 

Total number burnt in effigy 18,637 

Total number condemned to other punishments 293,533 

Total 347,704 

aking up other Catholic text books we find in the preface to the 
Third Reader of the Catholic National Series," more largely used than any 
other in the parochial schools this naive statement: " The Third Reader, in 
common with the other books of the ' Catholic National Series,' has one chief 
characteristic, viz.: a thoroughly Catholic tone, which will be fomid to per- 
vade the whole book." Imagine a school book commended to our approval 
by the statement that it had " a thoroughly Baptist," or " Methodist," or 
"Episcopalian tone" for Use in any of our denominational colleges, much less 
in our public schools. 

The table of contents prefixed to " The Third Reader " contains among 
others equally suggestive, the following titles: "Bessie's First Mass," "St. 
Germaine Cousin," " Tlie Weight -of a Prayer," "Pope Leo XIII and the 
Brigands," "The Legend of the Infant Jesus Serving at Mass," " How to be 
a Nun," "St. Bridget " and "St. Francis of Assisi." " The Weight of a Pray- 
er " relates that a woman went into a butcher shop and asked for meat. 
When the butcher inquired what she had to give for it, she answered, "Noth- 
ing but my prayers." The butcher says that prayers will not pay rent and 
buy cattle. But inclined to joke, he says he will give her as much meat as her 
prayer will weigh. Thereupon he writes the poor woman's prayer on a slip 
of paper and puts it on one side of the scale and puts a tiny bit of meat on 
the other side. To his astonishment the paper does not rise. He puts on a 
larger piece. Still the paper remains down. Then in fright he puts on the 
scale a large round of beef, and turning to the woman, acknowledges the evi- 
dent hand of God, and in penitence promises her in the future all the meat 



B 



Rome's Assault on Our Public Schools. 33 

she may want. In this book are several other instances of modern miracles 
of similar character. 

In the third reader usedin the parochial schools of this city (which schools 
you are asked to support by taxation) the lessons have such titles as "The 
Eosary" and " Hail Mary,"" in the latter of which a Catholic cliild ex- 
pounds to a benighted Protestant playmate the benefits of praying to the 
Blessed Virgin. Kow do our Catholic friends think it is good for them or 
their children to make denominationalism the chief characteristic of their 
books, especially of tlieir children's books? Surely we do not want Catholic" 
reading books and Metliodist spelling books and Jewish geographies and Bap- 
tist histories and Presbyterian granunars and Episcopalian arithmetics! 
There is nothing sectarian in the multiplication table, and there ought not to 
be in iiistory, which concerns itself simply with facts. Now the question is 
are citizens of this free Kepublic doing their duty when they allow their 
children to be systematically taught that "all Pi-otestant countries are strong- 
holds of bigotry and intolerance," that " the Holy See has been God's instru- 
ment in conferring upon Europe every blessing it enjoys " — that "to Catholics 
are due all the valuable inventions we have," that "the only bond of unity be- 
tween Protestants is their hostility to Catholicity," that " the Thirty Years' 
War was a Lutheran rebellion?" Is it the honest way to teach history to 
justify the horrors of the Inquisition and the massacre of St. Bartliolome'w — ■ 
to say as does Bishop Gilmour's History: "Eomanism hss ever appealed 
to reason; Protestantism, like Mohamedanism to force and violence?" 
But we are told it is nobody's business what we Catholics teach in our own 
schools. May we not do what we will with our own? No, you may only do 
what is right with your own — what is consistent with public safety. 

If the Roman Churcli or any other church desires to found parochial 
schools, well and good, provided they are supported by the Church and not 
by the State, and provided attendance upon them is voluntary, and not en- 
forced by religious threats, and the instruction shall be equal in character to 
that provided by the State; and provided that patriotism and loyalty to the 
Republic be inculcated in the minds of the pupils. There must be no per- 
version of the common school fund. We must continue to have American 
schools for the education of American citizens. 

Father Gleeson quotes Rev. Dr. Piatt as saying that "the public schools 
are not calculated to build up Protestantism." Certainly not. The public 
schools are not a I'eligious propaganda— they were not founded and they are 
not maintained to make either Protestants or Catholics, but to make Ameri- 
cans — a majestic fact that is beyond the comprehension of some narrow Pro- 
testants as well as Catholics. If Protestantism cannot stand the light, I say 
let it go to the wall. 

But what do the children in the parochial schools learn about the history 
of our own country? Sadlier's smaller geography — a textbook that is very 
popular in the parochial schools — that probably contains all the American 
history that the poorer scholars ever learn, and it is enough of tlie kind, con- 
tains just fifteen questions and answers on the history of the founding of this 
nation, and nearly half of the space occupied by them is devoted to gloi'ifying 
the Catiiolic Church. All that it says about the Puritans in America is that 
they were very intolerant. Sadlier's larger history says: " The only system- 
atic and successful attempts to civilize and Christianize the Indians were made 
by Catholic missionaries." "The independence of the United States was, in a 
f/reat degree, secured by Catholic blood, talent and treasure." 

It devotes twice the space to Arciibishop Hughes that it does to Abraham 
Lincoln, and gives twenty-eight lines to George Washington and thirtyseven 
to Father Peter de Smet, whosoever he may be. ^ M^^^^ A 

Why, the inferiority of tbe parochial systeqi, its utter inefficiency, is con- [ 

fessed by the Baltimore Council of 18(!G, whicii says: "It is a melancholy fact \ 

and a very humilating avowa! for us to mak^ that a very large proportion of 
tiie idle and vicious youth cf our principal cities are the children of Catholic 
parents," and then it goes on to advise the establishment of protectorates and 
I'eformatories. 




34 Rome's AssauIvT on Our Public Schools. 

And Dr. O. A. Brownson, to whom the Catholics are erecting a statue, said 
that Catholics must become Americans — that so far they are a foreign colony 
in this country, representing a civilization inferior to the American. lie says 
that Catholic schools fail to recognize human progress, and tend to repress 
rather than quicken the intellectual life of the pupil and to unfit rather 
than to prepare him for his social duties. 

In 1881 the Freeman's Journal (Catholic) called the parochial schools 
" apologies, compromises; systemless pretenses," in which a smattering of the 
catechism is supplied to fit the children for the duties of life." 

And now I will not leave this branch of my subject without a word for 
Father Gleeson, who I take it, is personally a very pleasant gentleman, albeit 
afiiicted with an "ecclesiatical impediment" which sometimes prevents his 
giving a straightforward yes or no to a civil question, and with a race instinct 
which prompts him now and then to shoot from behind the hedge. Pie is by 
no means deficient in a certain genial Celtic sense of humor, and he ought to 
see the exquisite comicality of his change of front on the public school question 
since the 11th of August. Can it be the same fiery Peter the Hermit who 
preached a crusade on that day against the schools and who now "roars as 
gently as any sucking dove," and says "we are being unjustly accused. All in 
the world we want is a reformation, a perfecting of tJtie system." Has some 
prudent prelate curbed his zeal, or has he, like Frankenstein, called forth a 
giant in the shape of public indignation that he cannot conjure down? 

He says I used violent language. I take you to witness that the only 
menacing or incendiary language in my sermon was the following uttered by 
Monsignor Capel, a prelate of the Eomish Church: "The time is not far away 
when the Koman Catholics, at the order of the Pope, will refuse to pay their 
school tax, and will send bullets to the breasts of the Government agents rather 
than pay. The order can come any day from Eome. It will come as quickly 
as the click of a trigger, and it will be obeyed of course, as coming from God 
Almighty himself." 

A threat that may explain why it is that the Roman Catholic secret society, 
the Ancient Order of Hibernians, have a military bra'.;ch and in all our cities 
is drilling its armed battalions in secret — battalions bound by an oath to put 
church above country and to admit none but Roman Catholics to their rendez- 
vous, and to present an unbroken front to the enemies of the church. 

Fellow citizens, there are two Christian ladies in this congregation to-night 
who were present when the worshipers were fired upon in the churches in the 
city of Philadelphia once by Romish rioters who were frenzied by the assaults 
of priests upon the public schools. 

That will not happen again, because Americans are learning that eternal 
vigilance is the price of liberty! 

I believe there are multitudes of Catholics who are as genuine Americans 
and as genuine Christians as any of the men and women I address to-night. 

Of them we have no fear; they are indeed tiie hope of our land. To politi- 
cal priests we say, "Hands ofl" ! Eternal separation of Church and State! No 
sectarian appropriations! No dividing of the School fund!" 

Fellow citizens, let us stand by our schools; let us take a practical interest in 
them. Let us favor a broad and liberal policy for buildings and maintenance. 
Let us ask our Council to appropriate that 40 per cent, of the school tax levy 
which the charter makes available, for the erection of school buildings worthy 
of our city and our schools, so that the enthusiasm you have shown when the 
schools are attacked may prove itself to be more than a mere barren sentiment. 
I thank God for this agitation. It has done good, and the people have spoken 
in no uncertain tones, to the dismay and confusion of the enemies of American 
free schools. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ^ 

029 445 894 3 



